Trading-In/Selling Outright/Selling to Online Companies - Tell Your Story

[Mav]

Carvana was by far the highest of all my offers. By at least a few 1000. I managed to pocket 11,000 for my Q50 that I was upside down on prior to COVID. Saving that for a down payment on the Bronco

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[James St. Patrick]

When I decided that my new vehicle was going to be the new 2022 Maverick Hybrid my current vehicle, the 2015 Honda Fit Ex with 43,800 miles on it, was on borrowed time and I was either going to trade it in (and save 6.25% on sales tax), sell it outright or sell to one of the online companies.

This is my story.

I was not going to be selling the Fit until I had a confirmed build week and a signed "Buyers Order" from the dealership for my Maverick.

In the meantime since I placed my Maverick order on 8/23 I decided to see what my Fit was worth.

The valuations were all over the place.

Kelly Blue Book had the trade-in value from $12,250 to $13,500. The private party sale value was from $13,750 to $15,175

When I was at AutoNation Honda in Lewisville TX to have my state inspection done signs were all over the dealership saying "They wanted to buy My Car" or that is what they implied.

Their initial offer of $10,000 was an insult which I stated. They then countered with $11,000 which I then said was still an insult and then walked out the door. On the way home I got a text from them to come back and they would give me $12,500. So in a matter of 10 minutes their offer went up 25%.

Kelly Blue Book has a link for them to buy your car outright. I tried them but their offer was also insulting at $11,505.

At the AutoNation Ford Frisco TX dealership where I had just signed my "Buyers Order" I asked for them to give a current valuation for trading-in. They only offered $11,750.

At this point it was obvious that trading-in to a dealership was not the way to go in getting the best value.

So I then tried both Carvana and Vroom.

Vroom made the first offer of $15,483 and then Carvana came in with the wow offer of $16,523.

I am retired and my wife works remotely from home we can get by for the 2.5 months until my Maverick gets delivered.

So I accepted the Carvana offer because, besides being the highest, it exceeded the highest KBB private party sale by $1,348 so no point in doing a private party sale with all the hassles that involves.

Today I closed the deal with Carvana for the agreed upon $16,523 price. It took only about 15 minutes and went extremely smooth.

In selling to Carvana I made an additional $4083.62 above the ($11,750 trade-in + 734.38 sales tax saving) from the dealership where my Maverick is being delivered to.

Very nice moves!

Vroom and Carvana provide quick appraisals from home. Using KBB, Carmax, and you will have a strong case >trade in money because you know the value of your vehicle in TODAY’s market, before your vehicle is appraised at the dealership.

 

[clippedwings]

I ordered two months ago with no response from Ford as to my Lariat build yet. I can't be without my vehicle as it is also my work vehicle, so although I would like to get going on the sale of my current vehicle, I can't do anything yet. This has been one of the worst aspects of making this "retail order". Planning ahead for the transition is impossible. Thanks for the leads. I will check them out when I am able to move on. PS. My dealer made me a laughable offer!

 

[Mattmuzic]

Dealers offered 19-21k for my Jetta GLI. Carvana offered 23k and a vroom offered 25k. I sold my car to vroom and it took a few weeks, but it was worth the extra 2k. My father just sold his car to carvana because they were higher then vroom and it took less then a week. Now I’m driving my 07 f150 work truck until the maverick gets in.

 

[OhLeo]

I took a different route (not great)
A few months ago I was considering selling my 2011 Honda Pilot to get the down for the Maverick. One afternoon my son was driving it and someone ran a red light and totaled it. I thought the most I may get via selling it was about $12K, especially since I paid $15K 3 1/2 years ago. Well my insurance company valued it at $15.2K, plus they paid me the sales tax and it was up to $16.3K.
My Maverick went from a reasonable XLT to a loaded Lariat.
BTW everyone involved in the accident was fine, my Honda did deploy a shit-ton of airbags though.
I guess it worked out, you never know.

 

[JKinPA]

My 07 Mountaineer with 104k. As soon as my Maverick was shipped I put it on Craigslist. Listed it for $6k, bought it for 7800 five years ago. First person that looked at it bought without even haggling. I am pleased, was initially thinking maybe $3500. one dealer offered me 2800 for a trade, lmao. Definitely makes the $33,152 out the door for my Maverick a deal in my mind.

 

[Old Ranchero]

I'm just buying mine outright. No trades, no sales, no cool stories- just boring shit

 

[pxpaulx]

Here are my tales monitoring potential values since June. I had a 2019 Ranger XLT mid-trim FX4, tech, tow packages - blue with 14K miles (purchased by me Dec 2019):

Order placed for my Maverick June 18th. I started monitoring values through the various online appraisal avenues.

June - highest buy offer just above $35K - all above $33,500
July - offers start to drop by $1K overall
August - offers are dropping another $1K. Best is still $33,500, and I have an offer from the dealer at $32K (tentative as not built/delivered yet). I'm considering private to get back up towards $35K, but decide that is too much money to have to deal with a private sale.
September early - best offers have dropped, now at $32,500. I am crossing my fingers that the dealer will stick to their August value, but suspect it will slightly drop (they know I'm getting the full tax benefit in the neighborhood of $2K)

Now comes the fun part! So I'm marked as built and shipped 9/18. I reach out to the dealer, and we are at the same level. Great! I am going to come out a little ahead against the cost of the Maverick, enough to get an aftermarket tonneau. This is also my break-even truck cost - at $32,500 I will have had the Ranger from new for 20 months at zero cost. I'm happy and excited!

Wait, the fun part of that last paragraph was being built...the fun part for my wallet came next! We went on vacation the last week of September - I'd checked a couple of the options (maybe vroom and carvana), and saw values going up - I was being offered $34,500 around Sept 24th. While on vacation, my Maverick arrived - a good 3 weeks earlier than anticipated. Knowing I would head down to get it the following weekend, I hit up all the online and local offer avenues - a couple large dealers, KBB, Carvana, Vroom (which had been the highest recently), and...Carmax.

Excuse me Carmax, how much did you want to give me again? I'll be there tomorrow afternoon! 2 hours of our time and a very quick walk-around we left with a check for $37,400. Pocketed about $5K more than I was expecting (after taxes paid), I still can't believe it. There is nothing else in their inventory close to this value - they have since listed it a few bucks shy of $40K, which is itself just a few hundred above the sticker price. Good for them if they can get it.

Later that week also walked in to Granger to pick up my truck and had a targeted offer from Ford (that I didn't know about) added onto my discount - another $750 that has paid for that tonneau. Best selling and buying experience I have ever encountered, through no fault of my own for once, hahaha.

 

[ffjack15]

Sold my 2019 Buick Encore to Carvana best offer by a lot.

 

[Hawk]

Sold my 2016 Miata to Carvana for $5,300.00 more than I paid. Very smooth transaction.

 

[clavicus]

Yes, yes, good… now where do we start the line for the hopeful buyers of my 2003 Accord with 212k miles? The bidding will start at $5,000

 

[optikinescant]

My wife and I actually sold both our cars this summer to downsize to one-car using a very low cost lease and pocket anything we were paying on those two cars for a purchase of a new car, a Lariat Maverick, while I continue to work from home. Car Max was higher for one car and Carvana higher for the other, so we got to experience both. Each was well over blue book private seller value. In fact, we sold her Kia Seltos for two grand higher than the MSRP we paid a year ago. The market, especially this past summer was wild. They really make the process too easy, and I agree, they're part of what's screwing up the market.

 

[thosw]

Also a big for Carvana… they offered me WAY more than Carmax for my 2018 Nissan Frontier. I received over $4000 more than I paid for it 2 1/2 years ago.

 

[SlappaDaBass]

When I decided that my new vehicle was going to be the new 2022 Maverick Hybrid my current vehicle, the 2015 Honda Fit Ex with 43,800 miles on it, was on borrowed time and I was either going to trade it in (and save 6.25% on sales tax), sell it outright or sell to one of the online companies.

This is my story.

I was not going to be selling the Fit until I had a confirmed build week and a signed "Buyers Order" from the dealership for my Maverick.

In the meantime since I placed my Maverick order on 8/23 I decided to see what my Fit was worth.

The valuations were all over the place.

Kelly Blue Book had the trade-in value from $12,250 to $13,500. The private party sale value was from $13,750 to $15,175

When I was at AutoNation Honda in Lewisville TX to have my state inspection done signs were all over the dealership saying "They wanted to buy My Car" or that is what they implied.

Their initial offer of $10,000 was an insult which I stated. They then countered with $11,000 which I then said was still an insult and then walked out the door. On the way home I got a text from them to come back and they would give me $12,500. So in a matter of 10 minutes their offer went up 25%.

Kelly Blue Book has a link for them to buy your car outright. I tried them but their offer was also insulting at $11,505.

At the AutoNation Ford Frisco TX dealership where I had just signed my "Buyers Order" I asked for them to give a current valuation for trading-in. They only offered $11,750.

At this point it was obvious that trading-in to a dealership was not the way to go in getting the best value.

So I then tried both Carvana and Vroom.

Vroom made the first offer of $15,483 and then Carvana came in with the wow offer of $16,523.

I am retired and my wife works remotely from home we can get by for the 2.5 months until my Maverick gets delivered.

So I accepted the Carvana offer because, besides being the highest, it exceeded the highest KBB private party sale by $1,348 so no point in doing a private party sale with all the hassles that involves.

Today I closed the deal with Carvana for the agreed upon $16,523 price. It took only about 15 minutes and went extremely smooth.

In selling to Carvana I made an additional $4083.62 above the ($11,750 trade-in + 734.38 sales tax saving) from the dealership where my Maverick is being delivered to.

selling my ‘17 Jetta with 43k miles to them for $16. Paid 13 for it 2 years ago.

Wife’s a little peeved were only going to have one car for a month or two. Ordered an Ecoboost fwd Mav and was told approx 8 weeks. I WFH so it’s not a big deal.

Scheduling with Carvana this week.

 

[fishinmagician]

For me, I made the most money selling privately. Granted my car was older with high mileage. I went to about 5 different dealers, as well as all the online carvanas, CarMax, etc places.

Long story short, I sold my car privately on FB market place for twice as much money.

It was easy too. The only bad part is answering all the questions that potential buyers have and fielding low ball offers. The first person that was serious and came to test drive it bought it.

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