The psychology of potential car buyers. Flakes, Tire Kickers, No shows

[sdlife619]

Originally Posted by Fargobound

After reading this post IMO the seller is the one with the problem here. There’s one day you have an ad up for $5800 and the next day you want $7300.

Most people confuse rare with desirable. I think you should have taken that $5200 offer.

Yeah maybe I should have, but then I had a guy from Canada offer me even more, but decided at the last minute to cancel because shipping and taxes to Vancouver cost him too much than he could afford. It all depends, you wait and see who can offer you the most amount of money, and this is why, waiting for that one buyer is key. I actually got more inquires when the car was posted for $7,000 a couple of months ago when I first advertised it, but when no one really offered me a good deal, I kept dropping the price lower than I felt comfortable with. Then thats when I had more tire kickers and the people seemed more and more less legit stopping by.

Plus the value now that was recommended to me is $7,300 this is why I changed it.. I feel like the car is worth a solid $6,000, but the broker recommended the new listing price so that's what I'm shooting for at the moment. Sometimes when you price stuff too low, people think "Well there has to be something majorily wrong with it, like it doesn't run" and the kind of people that show up tend to look and be shadier as the price gets lower and lower from my experience.

I'll see what happens in the next couple of weeks. If someone wants it bad enough they'll offer me something fair for the both of us.

[Ultrarunner]

Many cars are worth more parted out... see this all the time with antique tractors... whole tractor might be 3k... yet a good hood might bring $400 and a set of wheels over 1k.

My brother had two guys in his driveway with cash in hand for his 68 Mustang... one from Germany and the other from New Zealand... the guy from New Zealand made the deal and that afternoon it was picked up and on it's way... my brother owned the car 30 years...

[oceangaia]

Having just bought a SUV on CL, I can say there are just as many flake sellers and it's just as tedious buying a car as selling a car. It's amazing how someone can be trying to sell a car for $10k and up and can't be bothered to write a decent ad and include clear pictures. I'm talking about ads that don't even mention mileage much less VIN and ownership history.

About half the cars I inquired about I never got a response. I guess they didn't like my questions about it's ownership and repair history, whether it tracked straight, whether it had been garaged, etc. I'm guessing it was either sold or they knew it would fail my evaluation but couldn't be bothered to let me know.

I looked at half a dozen before buying. Does that make me a tire kicker? Just because I go to see the car doesn't mean I'm going to buy it. And my life is as busy as a seller's. It can be difficult arranging and meeting to inspect it. But all that just goes with the territory of buying/selling privately. If a seller doesn't want to deal with flaky buyers or a buyer doesn't want to deal with flaky sellers, they can go to a car lot or dealership.