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Maybe I'm reading this wrong (and if I am, I'm sure there will be those to quickly correct me), but to me, the Edmunds suggest retail price for a vehicle is the suggested price that a dealer would price a vehicle for, hence the word "retail". Am I wrong on this? And generally, the retail price for a car is going to be more than the price it would sell privately.
Reason why I'm asking is that I came across this ad on Craig's List last night where the seller posted a screen shot of the suggested retail price for his/her vehicle that was to be sold, and the suggested retail price was something around $8,000 - in excellent condition. The seller wanted to sell the vehicle for $9,000. Now, the vehicle looked to be in good shape from the pictures, but I couldn't really tell if it was in excellent shape or not. Having said that, if I'm correct in my thinking, isn't the seller way over pricing his/her vehicle? Not only is he/she looking at a retail price for the car, but also pricing it above that price?
Or, am I wrong? I thought I've used that site in the past to price the value of my vehicle and it specifically told me the private sell value of it and not so much just the retail value?
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Retail price is the high blue book, whether sold by a dealer or private party. I would check NADA and KBB also, to compare and get a picture of the range. There is nothing wrong with someone asking more than the retail value if they think the car is in great demand, rare, or much better than average condition. More likely they jacked it up to allow the buyer some room to negotiate and still get what they think it's worth (or have to get to pay off the loan). Even dealers rarely get what they ask for a used car. I traded in a (lemon) 2002 Jeep Liberty and got $4,000 in 2014. Though the book retail value was about $7k, they offered it on their lot for $10,950! I don't know what they ended up getting for it but no one was likely to pay that much for a vehicle with poor reviews, over 100k miles 12 years old.
Retail price is the high blue book, whether sold by a dealer or private party. I would check NADA and KBB also, to compare and get a picture of the range. There is nothing wrong with someone asking more than the retail value if they think the car is in great demand, rare, or much better than average condition. More likely they jacked it up to allow the buyer some room to negotiate and still get what they think it's worth (or have to get to pay off the loan).
I understand that sometimes, a seller will have a car that is rare, in high demand, or in mint condition. Some vehicles, take for instance, a Mustang Cobra that has 2,000 miles on it in mint condition, will appreciate in value. So, KKB is thrown out the window. This didn't seem like a rare vehicle. I'd have to go back to the post to see exactly what it was, I want to say it was along the lines of a Tahoe or some sort of SUV. I remember the color being beige and the mileage was something over 100,000 (probably around 150,000.) Nothing about it screamed rare to me. Having said that, I always thought retail price is a price that a retail business would set for a product, not a private party seller. In fact, in all my years using KBB and Edmunds, there are separate pricing structures for private party and dealer/retail pricing.
Almost nothing qualifies for excellent condition. Maybe if it is one month old and mostly sat in an enclosed garage.
Edmunds is sometimes all over the place. I had a car - Edmunds said it was worth $1800, KBB said $8000, reality was about $5500
IME most private parties massively overvalue there vehicle. Some think "Excellent Condition" merely means nothing is broken. Other than cars bought as an investment, I have never seen a used car in excellent condition. If you drive it at all, it will be in less than excellent condition within a month, possibly within a week.
If you decide to buy a car like that - do not ever go back and look at other sales to try to figure out if you got a good deal. There is nothing you can do at that point and all it will do is stress you out. Just on't even look.
IME most private parties massively overvalue their vehicle. Some think "Excellent Condition" merely means nothing is broken.
This is so true.
Even though the terms at KBB and others sites(excellent, vgc, gc and fair) are well defined I have found most sellers still not realistic. For example. sellers do not want to understand that the lack of substantial service records and repair paperwork lowers a cars value.
I now text sellers in advance what kind of offer that can expect. Some don't like that style, others have worked with me. From my side, Houston is a huge city and that saves me 3 to 4 hours checking out a car to find an unreasonable seller.
If the news if too be believed, used car prices are falling quite rapidly at moment.
So, I can't really edit this thread, but I was wrong about this being Edmunds. It wasn't Edmunds, it was NADA. So, NADA gives you a clean retail price of a car, which quite frankly, I can see why someone would want to go with NADA. I put in the numbers for my car and according to this, I could sell it for about $3,000 more than what the other sites list my car is worth, private party. Which poses this question, when NADA gives you the clean retail price of the car, wouldn't this be the price of the car via a dealership and not private party?
OK, so this was a 2004 Chevy Tahoe, Z71 package, LTZ trim. The seller is asking $9,000 for it. Here's the weird thing. On KBB, you only had two trims to choose from, an LS and an LT. I chose LT. However, pretty much every other option that the ad posted was there for me to choose + the Z71 package, and I chose excellent condition (giving them the benefit of the doubt), and it wound up coming to a price of $6,250 private party price. I went on Edmunds, and I didn't have a choice for LT or LTZ, only LS. However, I pretty much maxed out the options and got a private party price in the $4,000 range. The dealer price was around $6,500 on Edmunds. Again, not really accurate because it didn't give me the option of choosing the actual trim.
Now, the seller said they had add-ons, but the things they mentioned that they put on the truck were pretty much things that needed replacing at the mileage that the truck was at. Such as, battery, fuel pump, filters, brakes, etc.. The only thing that was listed as an add-on was an exhaust system. OK, maybe they put the top of the line exhaust system on it?
Anyway, looking at it a bit more, I guess I understand pricing it more since it's an LTZ Z71 Tahoe, but at the same time, just seems like it's way over-priced. Seems like they're pricing it at retail price and not private party, but maybe this is reasonable since the other two sites didn't specifically list that particular trim level?
So, I can't really edit this thread, but I was wrong about this being Edmunds. It wasn't Edmunds, it was NADA. So, NADA gives you a clean retail price of a car, which quite frankly, I can see why someone would want to go with NADA. I put in the numbers for my car and according to this, I could sell it for about $3,000 more than what the other sites list my car is worth, private party.
No, you couldn't. You can sell it for what someone is willing to pay for it, NADA, Edmonds, KBB and all the others be damned. I've never found any of them to be particularly accurate.
The "add ons" are called maintenance. Besides, accessories, such as light bars, steps, etc are really worth nothing when it comes to resale.
Anything is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it, nothing more or less. Being Houston, trucks are high demand, but that being said, I'd keep searching vs. dealing with someone that out of touch.
No, you couldn't. You can sell it for what someone is willing to pay for it, NADA, Edmonds, KBB and all the others be damned. I've never found any of them to be particularly accurate.
What I'm saying is, according to NADA, I could. But in reality, I realize there are a lot more factors going into what my car would sell for than what one of those sites would say.
I will say this. Giving that where I live in NC, we don't see a great deal of winter weather. We do get snow storms and ice storms, but it varies on what we get and on average, it's usually not more than 5" of snow per storm, if that. I think we got one snow storm this year that gave us about 10" of snow, but after that, we were pretty mild and dry. I'm saying all of that to say that 4X4 trucks and SUVs are more for luxury around her than a necessity. You get them for the off chance that we have a very active winter, but the rest of the time, unless you're going muddin', you're not using 4WD.
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