Should I Sell My Car To A Dealership Or Privately?

Should I Sell My Car To A Dealership Or Privately?

Posted on June 21, 2021

Part of buying a new car is offloading your old one for as much money as possible. Not long ago, the decision was easy. If you needed the money, you sold the car privately. If you needed convenience, you traded it in. Now the question of selling to a dealership or privately is more up in the air.

With dealerships now offering better prices for trade ins, that decision has now swung firmly in favour of selling your car to a dealership rather than privately.

Our Copetown auto loans team explains why selling your car to a dealership now makes total sense.

Better prices

Trade in prices used to be fairly low. You should make less money trading in your old car than you would selling it privately as dealerships knew many were willing to take a hit on price in return for convenience.

That’s no longer true. Demand for used cars has increased and dealerships struggle to keep up.

That means more demand for good quality used cars, which means better prices.

Convenience

The main benefit of trading in versus selling privately is convenience. You can do it at the same time as buying your new car. You can drive into the dealership in one car and drive out with another.

All the paperwork can be handled at once, you only have to manage one negotiation and everything happens in a safe environment.

Money off your new car

Trading in your old car is usually done to offload the old one but also to reduce the amount of the auto loan used for the new one. It’s a very useful tactic that can replace or supplement the down payment depending on your situation.

Lowering the down payment means lower monthly payments, paying less interest and a potentially higher chance of being accepted for the loan.

No hassles of private sales

If you have ever sold a car privately, you’ll know that they can be a mixed blessing. You may have gotten a little more money but you also had to prepare the ad, take pictures, answer queries and calls and tackle test drives.

In some areas, test drives are tense times, especially if you’re selling a premium or upmarket car!

If you’re trying to sell a performance car, you also have to content with tire kickers and test pilots. Both of which present their own kinds of problems!

Don’t even get us started on negotiating with private buyers. That subject could take up a series of blog posts all on its own!

Trading in your old car

Now dealerships are offering much better prices for used cars, it’s a no brainer to sell your car to one. There is much less of a price difference between dealerships and private sales and you can sell it safely, confident in the knowledge nobody is going to steal the car, drive it for the sake of it or try to rip you off.

If you’re not a natural negotiator, you have even more reason to sell your car to us!

For any questions, concerns, or inquiries. Please don’t hesitate to contact us here!

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