Are 'private' used car sales dead???

[Hangus]

Reason is, I've had my car up for sale a good couple of weeks now and people only seem to want to p/ex. But not just p/ex, they want top money for theirs but knock me down. I mean, If you're wanting shot of yours it's only fair that you take a hit too.
It's been on the Trader for 12 days now, been on here a couple of weeks and also on the Any M website (my car is a BMW). Zero calls!

I don't think the ad is too bad - although I've tweaked it a few times and I've put some better quality pics on a few days ago. The price seems comparable with others out there and it's on Ebay with a Make an offer option.
I'm starting to think only dealers will be interested.

I don't need to sell the car - but for reasons I wont go into I'm sat on my backside for a couple of weeks and am not using the car so would have been ideal to sell it on now.

Anyone having similar trouble?

Cheers,

[Lukerevhen]

I was in a similar situation with my girlfriends cooper s a few weeks back - had it on all the specialist sites, eBay etc not one phone-call.. I then changed it to a 99p no reserve auction for 5 days - phone never stopped ringing and I ended up with something like 159 watchers. Eventually sold it to a really nice chap, came down the day after end of auction paid the full amount in cash and off he went! I think you need to be aware though, it is full of time-wasters and people who want to pay next to nothing! I ended up with a fair price - would have liked more but no less I was happy with what we got.

Good luck!

[kambites]

I suppose it's going to get harder and harder to sell cars privately as it gets less and less common to actually own cars.

On the plus side, this will hopefully lead to heavier depreciation in the first few years.

[mini1380cc]

Hangus said:

people only seem to want to p/ex. But not just p/ex, they want top money for theirs but knock me down. I mean, If you're wanting shot of yours it's only fair that you take a hit too.
Cheers,

They are playing trader from home. Its how they try and create margins in their cars. Top money for theirs and bottom for yours. Do that with each car you get and soon enough a £200 bucket turns into a £10k minter.... with enough effort.

[t400ble]

Stopped using auto trader

Too expensive

Get it on Pistonheads, and also Gumtree

Paul

[conkerman]

Pistonheads worked for me.

Carefully evaluate your price and advert.

[kiethton]

Got a lot of interest from eBay recently, has to be a fairly run of the mill car (can't check your profile on the work machine to see what you've got though )

[nickfrog]

Lower the price by £250 a week. As soon as you hit the price sweet spot, you'll get a call.

There is still a strong private buyers' market IMO. Maybe not quite as strong as a few years ago but it's still there.

[Escy]

mini1380cc said:

They are playing trader from home. Its how they try and create margins in their cars. Top money for theirs and bottom for yours. Do that with each car you get and soon enough a £200 bucket turns into a £10k minter.... with enough effort.

That's a great fantasy but it's not reality. I mean who will give top money for a px they don't want and let theirs go for bottom book? Whenever I get px's offered, they are always stacked in my favour otherwise I wouldn't take it. I'm sure that's the same for everyone?

You say your car is priced up the same as the others, that's your problem. I've sold a few cars lately and they need to be very cheap to sell. I don't think there is much money knocking about, hence px offers and no interest otherwise. Everyone wants a bargain.

I had a C70 D5 for sale recently. Had it on ebay classified ad with best offer. Had no interest. Started at 6k which was the going rate. Dropped it to £5500 after a couple of weeks which made it easily the cheapest around. Still no interest. Put it on a no reserve auction, sold it after a couple of days, before the auction was even half way through. I think they generate interest and make people move quicker.

[Devil2575]

Why would anyone selling their car privately take a Part exchange?

This always confused me when I was selling my car. Why would I want the hassle of having a second car to shift once i'd sold mine?

[Vladimir]

I advertised Dads Cooper S here and got nothing. It sold on AT within two days.
I had a few sniffs of my 335d but ended up pxing it for fairly painful money.

[dave7692]

I didn't sell my last car privately as I still had finance on it (probably the main problem nowadays with selling privately) and I wanted to transfer that over onto the new car, also the car itself was undesirable, notoriously rubbish, slow load of st and the local Peugeot Garage had them for sale offering finance for £110 a month so I'd have been stuck with it forever.

However the car before that I sold privately it was out there for a little while a few people came and had a look but mainly younger drivers (but it was a Fiesta 1.6 ZS so many found it uninsurable) but as soon as payday was approaching a guy turned up, offered to pay the asking price as long as I'd hold it for him for 4 days until he was paid but left what he could as a deposit, payday arrived he dropped the money round in cash and drove away.

I guess some of its just down to luck of the draw and timing.

I would say on mid-range cars (8-15k ish) that so many Garages now offer pretty much either 0% or very close to it on finance so most people opt to keep their lump sums of money in the bank and pay it off on finance.

[hornetrider]

It's the price.

[lukefreeman]

You're overpriced.

Do not price based on what traders are selling an equivalent vehicle at.

[TVR keith]

Sold several cars on PH. Always works

[sam303]

As the previous two posters have said, it's the price. You're asking too much. I say this with confidence, not knowing how much you're asking for your car or what kind of car it is. But the answer is always the same: it's too expensive.

ETA: no, private used car sales are not dead. Why, only the other day, I sold a fairly niche car (XC90 - the 3.2litre petrol version) privately with no p/x. Only took about 2-3 weeks. You just have to price it realistically and then hold your nerve when the chancers start making silly low offers. I turned down 2 or 3 offers at £6k (was advertising it at £7.5k) and eventually sold for £6700, which I was fairly happy with.

Edited by sam303 on Friday 28th March 12:52

[Hangus]

Lots of useful comments above so far - thanks. It is on PH also - Gumtree just attracted scammers within hours.
Autotrader is mega dear - wish I hadn't bothered with it on there, and the Any M website seems to get little traffic - paid for that too.

I think my two options are - drop the price to below 12K - say £11995, or do a no res auction - but that is a big risk. I don't have to sell - as I do need two cars - I use it for my job hence I put quite a lot of miles on it. So to have the risk of it going for 11K then paying ebay fees would be gutting.

[AMG01]

Interesting topic.

My brother is trying to sell his 2009 3 Series convertible and has had one bite in 2 months. Not a great time to sell a convertible but surprised. Seems to be similar price to others.

[snotrag]

Ditto all above - I've sold every car I've owned privately.

if it doesn't sell - its too expensive, easy!

[kiethton]

Problem you've got (for any car above £5k) is the number of people with access to the required funds, in cash.

Just look at the number of people who run cars on PCP/HP/Lease now compared to even 10 years ago