What are 7 things I can do to get the highest price when selling my car?

Ralph
00:00:00

Here's my question for today. Are you leaving thousands of dollars on the table when you're selling your car? Well today, I'm going to share a story about my client, Bill. Now Bill turned a potential $12,000 trade in offer into an incredible $17,500 private sale. So stay with me today to learn the 7 divine principles that could put an extra 30% or more in your pocket when you're selling your vehicle. Plus, you'll discover which selling platforms to avoid and which ones are worth your time. We've got a really practical episode for you today.

Podcast Announcer
00:00:34

Welcome to the Ask Ralph Podcast where listening to an experienced financial professional with over 30 years of experience can help you make sense of confusing questions, current headlines and industry trends about taxes, small business, financial decision making, investment strategies, and even the art of proper budgeting. Ask Ralph makes the complex simple by sharing his real world knowledge from a Christian perspective with all things financial.

Now here's your host, Ralph Estep Jr.

Ralph
00:01:03

Thank you for joining me today. I'm honored you chose to share your valuable time with me and I'm happy to assist you on your financial journey. And like I said, we've got a real practical show today. If you missed yesterday's show, I consider that a crucial topic and it was all about being scammed online. I talked about the immediate actions you should take after you're a victim of being scammed and listen, scams are getting more complicated every day and the key to this is prevention, knowledge and action. Those are truly your best defenses.

Well, today's listener question comes from Calvin in New Mexico, and this is what Calvin wrote. He said, "Dear Ralph, I'm in a real bind and need your guidance. After 15 years of marriage, my wife Penny and I are upgrading to a larger vehicle for our growing family, but I feel stuck. Three dealerships basically laughed at my trade in hopes for our 2018 Honda Accord. The highest offer was $12,000, but we need at least 15,000 for a down payment on our new family SUV. I've always tried to be a good steward of our resources, but right now, I feel like I failed. We've maintained the car well, but I'm worried about handling the selling process on my own. I'm worried about dealing with strangers, potential scammers and negotiating makes me uncomfortable. I know you combine practical advice with Christian principles, and I could really use both right now. Can you help me understand how to get the best price for our car while staying true to our values?"

Well Calvin that is a great question. Listen, this is something many of us have faced. Many of us have faced this particular situation. And I get it Calvin. I understand your apprehension and I understand your fears, but fear not my friend. I've got answers for you today. Now remember this show thrives on your questions. But today, I'm going to ask you some questions. I've recently built a listener survey and I want your honest opinion about the show. If you're a regular listener or maybe this is the first time you've joined us and listen. The survey's only going to take about five minutes of your time and here's the best part. I've sweetened the deal here. If you go ahead and do our survey, you're going to be entered into a $250 Amazon gift card drawing. You could do the survey at askralphpodcast.com/survey.

Now listen, your answers are going to shape the show. I need your answers to be completed by December 10th and the drawing will be on December 11th. So that'd be a nice 250 bucks for Christmas. And I would love to hear from you. Again, that's askralphpodcast.com/survey, and I'll put a link in the show notes.

Calvin, I always want to start with the good book, and I found this verse that fits perfectly with what we're talking about today. And it comes from the book of Colossians 3:23, and it says this. "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters." I think that kind of says it all Calvin, doesn't it? That verse says it all about what we need to do. So let's apply that to our discussion today.

I thought I'd share some statistics with you before we got started today. All about this idea of you've got this car, you're looking for a new vehicle. You want to trade it in, but here's some interesting statistics and here's the deal. Private sales, those are the nine trade-ins, it's noted here that they typically yield 15 to 25% more than trade-ins. So, if you're thinking about this, there's a good starting point. Here's another piece of statistical advice. Well maintained cars retain 20% more value. My dad always told me, take care of your vehicle, son. Here's another interesting statistic. Detailed cars sell 15% faster. I guess that kind of makes sense. And listen to this one. This one was really surprising to me. Professional photos increase inquiries by 30%. So I think those are some good stats to get started. But I mentioned at the beginning that I was going to tell you a story about my client Bill.

So let me get to that story. And the truth is this story perfectly illustrates today's topic. And also why it's so crucial. Now this client of mine, Bill, he came to me last summer. Like you Calvin, he was frustrated and discouraged. He had just visited three dealerships. He was trying to trade in his 2018 Honda Accord.

Like I mentioned at the beginning. And he said to me, Ralph he said, the highest offer I've gotten from any of these dealerships was $12,000. And he shared with me, he said, Ralph, I feel defeated. He said to me, Ralph he said, to be candid with you, we got to really get 15,000 in order to make our budget work. He needed that for a down payment. And that payment was all about trying to get it to work with his monthly payment he could afford in his budget. He also said, listen, the truth is we've outgrown this Honda Accord. We really need this new SUV. He had a growing family. And I could see it in his eyes, the tension, he felt trapped. And listen, I've seen this look many times. So many of us feel this way. Being honest, I felt this way myself.

We feel trapped by our financial situation. Sometimes it's things we've done, sometimes its things beyond our control. But I sat down with Bill. I shared with him, I may have a better way. So you might ask Ralph, you're an accountant. What do you know about auto sales? And that's a fair question, but here's the deal. I learned a lot about this when I was an executive at a credit union. I dealt with vehicle financing every day, I dealt with repo's and resale. So I really got a good idea of what's going on the auto market. So I have a little street credibility here, so I hope you'll bear with me. Well, let me get back to Bill. And I told Bill, I said dude, you can likely get 30% more if you do this thing correctly, if you do a private sale. And I said to him, here's some specific strategy you can follow.

He said, Ralph, he said, I'm being honest with you, man. I just want this done quickly. I don't have the time for those tire kickers and scammers. And I said to him, Bill, I get it. I understand that feeling. That is tough. That's why most people, I don't have a statistic for this. But I'd be willing to bet most people just go in and trade-in in the dealership because it's easy.

They take care of the whole process. But think about that for a second. And I'm not bad-mouthing dealerships. But are you really getting the best deal if you're not doing anything? And that's the thing. It's the strong desire to take the easy route. But I think what we found in our faith is the truth is good stewardship often requires extra effort. That's just a fact. And I said to Bill, it's going to take some extra effort. So you might ask Ralph, what did you do? That's a great question. So over the next two weeks, we implemented the seven steps I'm about to share with you today. And let me just tell you, the transformation was remarkable. And in the end, like I said, Bill sold his car for $17,500. Yup. If you do the math, that's $5,500 more than the best trade in offer. But guess what? Here's the greatest part of the whole thing. He also had a multiple backup offers over 16 grand.

And here's the thing, Bill approached this entire process as a ministry opportunity. It was interesting to watch this as I saw these two weeks develop. He was honest about every aspect of the car. There was little nicks and dings and little odds and ends about the thing. He had the car for a long time. But he treated each potential buyer with respect. And here's the coolest part of the whole thing. He even shared his faith during test drives. He was able to witness to them.

And Bill said he learned, he said, Ralph, I learned that even selling a car can be an opportunity to demonstrate my Christian values and action. So before I share these 7 game-changing steps that helped Bill, I want to remind you that I'm here to guide you through your financial journey. This is I deal with Bill. My expertise and personal finance combined with our shared Christian values can help you navigate any financial decision. So let's get to those seven steps to maximize your car sales price. The first one. Documentation is king. You listen to my show, you know I talk about this all the time.

Keep those records, keep all your maintenance records. My wife makes a funny one. I talk about this, but whenever we go to the car deal, we're buying a new car, I get all the documents, I scan them in. So I start off that process with having all the documents. Part of that is creating a detailed service history.

If you're going to sell your car, people are going to want to know what the service records were. They want to see that you maintained it. They want to see any upgrades or improvements. Have those receipts. Those will add to the value of the car. Another thing I highly recommend is get an inspection, have an inspection report ready. Have that available for that person so that they don't feel like they're wasting their time.

If you've got these records, you know, here's the purchase documents, if you have them. Here's all the detailed service history. A lot of times you can even go to where you've had it service nick and print that out for you. Maybe you added some improvements, maybe you did some things to the car throughout the life of the car and have those receipts ready.

So the first thing, like I said, documentation is king. Another thing you've got to consider is strategic timing. Yes, there is timing when you go to sell a car. You got to know the market. You're not selling convertibles in the fall. The best time to sell convertible's in the spring and the best time to sell SUV's is right before winter. Another thing you can use is after my own heart consider tax refund season. If you think about, Hey, I want to get the best opportunity to sell my vehicle, maybe a great time to do that is when people have more cash in their hand. Maybe that's, you know, mid to late February, early March, where those people who have filed tax refunds are getting those monies in.

They have that cash to work with. Number three on my list here is professional detailing. A lot of people don't understand just the impact of this. And I've got several clients that do this for a living. You need to make that investment in that professional cleaning. Have, you know, do some minor cosmetic issue repairs. One of the big things that I found out when I was working with the credit union, we would repossess cars, and we put them out on our lot to sell them is you got to address any unusual odors and here's a pro tip.

Somebody told me about this one time and I've used this ever since. If you've got a vehicle that's got a weird smell to it, take a couple of dryer sheets and put them underneath the seats. And that will generally take care of those smells. Another thing you might want to consider, it's paint touch ups. I'm a tripped over my words there but consider those paint touch-ups so be careful.

This is not a paint by numbers project. You don't want your toddler out there doing these. I've seen these on cars where they get the little touch up kit and it looks terrible. So I'm not going to recommend you do that. But if you'd know what you're doing or consider going to one of these detail folks, a lot of these detail folks will be able to do that for you.

So number three was professional detail. Number four, you got to research the price. I call this price research. Check multiple valuation sources. A lot of those like Car Sense, Carvana, Kelley Blue Book has a cash offer program. You plug in your VIN number, you plug in all the pertinent information, the mileage, your zip code, all the additions, all the things you've added to it.

You got to study those local market prices. Then you might want to consider looking at regional demand, like places like Carvana, I've actually sold a van through Carvana. The best thing about Carvana is they're going to give you that cash offer and they are going to open up the region. You might get a little bit better price. But this is the time to do your homework. Price research, check similar listing.

See what that vehicle is selling for. That way, when you go to the deal, let's say, you're going to consider, hey, you know, Ralph, I'm going to consider either trade-in or I'm going to go and sell it third party. Now listen, during COVID it was interesting. You could sell secondhand cars and people were making a profit on it.

I actually sold a minivan, made about a $10,000 profit because there was such high demand. We're not seeing that right now. So you've got to adjust to those market fluctuations. That's why I say, do your price research. And number five. Quality photos and description. We alluded to this when we talked about some of those statistics. Take professional grade photos.

Listen, if you've got an iPhone or an Android phone, you can take great pictures. I encourage you to capture all the angles, highlight special features, but here's the deal. Be honest about the condition. Show those dings and scratches. Look, it doesn't help you if you put on this fake facade how great this car is. Somebody comes out to see and then they realize that you didn't take a picture of the side that had a whole dent in the side or scratches across it. You better off being honest from the beginning.

If not, you're just going to waste your time. You're going to waste their time. So take those quality photos and give a very good description. I mean, down to the detail. The cool thing about this with the internet, you can plug in that VIN number and you can find out all the specifics and put that into the advertisement. And number six, and this one is really crucial. You got to choose the right selling platform.

We talk a lot about this. You know, there are pros and cons to private sale versus trade-in. So let's talk about those. So the pros to private sales, you generally get a higher selling price. You get that direct negotiation, you control the process. Now the cons of private sales it's a more of a time investment.

Don't have time for these tire kickers and these scammers. Which leads me to the second thing of the private sale, you know, cons and that's safety considerations. You've got to do this smartly. You want to meet people in public places. Don't go there by yourself. And of course last but not least under private sale cons are payment risks.

Listen, if you're going to be selling a car, you're going to want to get either cash or get a cashier's check or work it out with the bank somehow but be very cautious about payments. That's a big deal. Now let's talk about the other side of the coin and that's those trade-ins. And the pros of that it's convenient.

Absolutely convenient. It's an immediate transaction. You show up at the dealership, you ask them, what are you going to give me for the car, the used car manager is he takes it for a drive, checks it out and you've got bang, there's money. And you can apply that rate to a trade-in if you're doing it. So there's really some benefits to that. There might be some tax advantages to that. Now the problem is there's also trade-ins. Trade-in cons and there's downsize to this. Listen, generally, as we saw in the statistics, you're going to get a lower value if you go to trade-in. Now, like I said, there have been weird times in the economy when that doesn't happen, and it depends on your vehicle. But generally I can say you're going to get a lower value. And you're not going to have as much negotiation.

You don't have that ability to really haggle back and forth. They kind of are going to tell you, Hey Ralph, here's what I'm going to give you for the car. You may have a little bit of negotiation, but you got to be careful about that too. And I've done shows about this. They might make it look like they're giving you more for your trade in. But some of that's a game. They're just adding it to the sales price.

They're not giving you a bigger discount on the sales price. So, and ultimately. One of the trade in cons is that you have less control. That's just the truth. So let's look at number seven on my list and that's negotiation strategy. You got to have a negotiation strategy whether you're selling it by trade-in or you're doing private party, you got to know your bottom line, you got to be prepared. You got to understand like my client here. He said Ralph, we need to get 15,000 for this.

Now, whether that was reality, the front ended up getting 17,500. So obviously, there were some reality to that, but he had to be prepared. You have to have your documentation ready. One of the big things about negotiation. A lot of people don't understand this. They get so emotionally caught up in it. You got to be prepared to walk away. I did shows about this buying cars. Sometimes you got to get up and walk away.

You got to do the same thing because what I have seen sometimes, if you list a car on some of these car sales sites, personal shop, look at the car and they like it, but then they want to sit there and negotiate with you. And you got to be willing to say, listen, dude, I'm sorry you drove 100 miles, but I'm not selling it for that because they'll put the squeeze on you.

They'll put that emotional, oh, you know, I drove so far. Can't you knock another $100 for another 500 off. And it all comes down to understanding your market position. You got to really understand that. So I hope these tips are helping, I'm going to share some value maximization tips in just a few minutes, but first let me ask you this question. Are you losing sleep wondering how you'll afford everything on your holiday list this year? Are you tired of starting every new year, buried under a mountain of holiday debt?

There's credit card bills just keep adding up and then you'd get those in January and February you want to scream. Are you looking to create magical Christmas memories without the financial stress that usually comes from them? Listen, Christmas is a stressful season for people. Well discover peace of mind with my free guide, "Surviving the Holidays Without Going Broke".

Listen, I put this guide together because I want you to learn a few things. I'm providing you a proven budget system that actually works. How to plan for the holidays. I'm going to give you some smart shopping strategies that can help slash your costs. I'm going to give you some ideas for ways to create magical memories without maxing out credit cards.

There are ways to do it without spending a dime. Another part of my guide is teaching kids gratitude and that's hard to do in is gimme more world. And the central core is to how to keep your faith and family at the center of your celebration. So listen, don't let January credit card bills steal your holiday joy. Download your free guide at askralphpodcast.com/christmas. And make this your most meaningful and dare I say, affordable holiday season yet. Listen, your stress-free holiday starts here.

That's at askralphpodcast.com/christmas. I promised to share those lifetime value maximization tips and my action steps to get you prepared to sell your vehicle. So here we go. Here's a big thing you've got to do. Maintain your car's value throughout ownership. When you go to sell it, this isn't the time to have done that.

You need to do this throughout the time that you own it. Follow those maintenance schedules. Keep that interior clean. Park in covered areas. Address issues promptly. If you've got that check engine soon, get to the dealer or get to your mechanic and get it fixed. And maintain that documentation. That's all the ways you can maximize that car throughout its ownership.

And then you're not struggling when you go to sell it. So let's talk about some specific things you can do if you say, you know what, Ralph, I've decided, I'm going to take your advice. I'm going to go try to private party sell this thing. Here's my action steps. Number one, gather all your maintenance records. Like I said before, if you don't have those all in front of you, contact the places where you've done business, hopefully you've used the same dealership or you've used the same mechanic and say, listen, can I get a printout of all the maintenance records on my 2018 Honda Accord. Second thing, research current market values. Go on those websites, go get Kelly Blue Book has a great program where they'll give you a cash offer. They'll reach out to other dealerships that will contact you. So know what you're dealing with. Like I said before, get that professional inspection.

Maybe this is a time to go work with that mechanic you work where you're asking for these maintenance records go say, hey, what would you charge me to do a professional inspection to look everything over. It's generally not that expensive and you might find it, there are some issues that you can address that might be nickel and dime issues

but could get you a higher sale price. As I said before, number four of my lists take quality photos. Take quality photos of all the size, the front, the back, the sides. And be honest about it. Show those dings, those blemishes. There's no reason to set yourself up for failure by trying to get away with something. It just doesn't make any sense. Number five

on multiple platforms. There's no reason you can't leverage the internet to list your vehicle on places like Facebook marketplace or cars.com or Craigslist. I mean, there's a whole host of things. Number six, prepare for negotiations. Be willing to know what your bottom lines are.

Be willing to walk away like we talked about. Be willing to stand that ground. And last but not least number seven, consider timing of your sale. Like I said, selling a convertible in December on the east coast is not a good plan. People aren't thinking about buying convertibles at that point in time. Well, I hope you join me tomorrow.

I'm going to discuss five common RMD mistakes to avoid. This is crucial information for anyone approaching retirement. I'm 52 when it's like I stung in yesterday, I had to meet with a client. He's a little bit older than me and I'm thinking, wow, I'm getting closer and closer to this. So tomorrow I'm going to cover that, you know, require a minimum distribution or RMD mistakes to avoid because those things can be costly. So if you know anybody or you yourself looking for that, you're getting close at retirement age.

I'm going to encourage you to check out tomorrow's episode. Remember this. My passion is to help you achieve financial success. This is why I do what I do. This is my mission field. I want to see you live out your dreams, and I want to see you grow in your faith. Because I know working together, we can master your finances from a Christian perspective. So hopefully you got some practical advice today in Ralph the car salesman or Ralph the car value guy came out. But I encourage you to stay financially savvy out there and God bless you abundantly.

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