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My Best Guess as to why "for sale by owner" car ads have largely gone away, is because fewer and fewer people have cash, which is obviously what sellers want. Even for used cars at the $5K level, which is what, a seven year old van with 80,000 miles, you're going to be at or above five grand, and not many folks have a checking account with that much in it.
Bottom line, I believe dealerships took over the market because they have the ability to finance buyers. Until someone has the foresight to open up a car lot full of consignments - cars owned by private sellers - and makes their money from a small commission and kickbacks from whatever finance company they use to get buyers the loans they need, "for sale by owner" is going to stay on the low side.
Which is a shame, because good, one-owner cars are in demand, and really help lower-income folks. I have sold mine in the past by placing an ad on the bulletin board at work, but I had the luxury of working in a building with over 700 people. Now that I'm retired, I'm not sure what I'll do, I hate to trade at a two-thousand dollar loss. I typically buy new every seven-to-ten years, just to avoid the headaches from having to keep an older car maintained (plus lack of confidence on reliability as they cross the 100K mile barrier). Maybe the answer to this is to simply own TWO older cars, one to drive and one to service when it breaks. In my area, the "go-to" paper was the "Tradin' Times", there were literally thousands of ads for pretty much everything you could think of. But they are long-gone, likely killed off by Ebay.
Theres also a site caled nextdoor which is specific to your locality and lists only those.
Yeah, I peruse this daily. In my area, people seem to think their vehicles are worth 20-30% more than KBB so it's tough to find anyone willing to negotiate down a bit, even when offering cash.
My Best Guess as to why "for sale by owner" car ads have largely gone away, is because fewer and fewer people have cash, which is obviously what sellers want. Even for used cars at the $5K level, which is what, a seven year old van with 80,000 miles, you're going to be at or above five grand, and not many folks have a checking account with that much in it.
Bottom line, I believe dealerships took over the market because they have the ability to finance buyers. Until someone has the foresight to open up a car lot full of consignments - cars owned by private sellers - and makes their money from a small commission and kickbacks from whatever finance company they use to get buyers the loans they need, "for sale by owner" is going to stay on the low side.
Yep. So many that live paycheck to paycheck. Have nothing saved.
So off to the corner used car dealer for a good looking clunker.
With high interest rates to boot.
This is what I used and LOVED it, you can set it up so it notifies you when cars that match what you enter come up for sale, its a great tool when looking for a new car.
This is what I used and LOVED it, you can set it up so it notifies you when cars that match what you enter come up for sale, its a great tool when looking for a new car.
But can you filter out dealers? I couldn't find a way to do that. You can do it on Craigslist although I suspect many dealers find creative ways around that.
I found that you get a much better idea of what it is when shown on autotrader. People with trash to sell most of the time will not pay the fee to have it listed on autotrader. Just be sure the car is close by where you can have time to check it out well.
I much prefer to buy from a private seller but other than Craigslist (sketchy), where do you all go to find listings from private sellers? The most popular listing sites like Cargurus, Cars.com, etc. seem to be 98% dealer listings. Wondering if there is a site that caters more to private seller listings?
what kind of car/truck are you looking for?
Hemmings won't offer Honda Accords but will have a bunch of collector cars (for example)
My Best Guess as to why "for sale by owner" car ads have largely gone away, is because fewer and fewer people have cash, which is obviously what sellers want. Even for used cars at the $5K level, which is what, a seven year old van with 80,000 miles, you're going to be at or above five grand, and not many folks have a checking account with that much in it.
Bottom line, I believe dealerships took over the market because they have the ability to finance buyers. Until someone has the foresight to open up a car lot full of consignments - cars owned by private sellers - and makes their money from a small commission and kickbacks from whatever finance company they use to get buyers the loans they need, "for sale by owner" is going to stay on the low side.
Which is a shame, because good, one-owner cars are in demand, and really help lower-income folks. I have sold mine in the past by placing an ad on the bulletin board at work, but I had the luxury of working in a building with over 700 people.
Not true..... I put a 12 year old pickup on craigslist with good photos/good description and it was sold in 5 days for $7000 (asking 7500). Got dozens of calls.
5 years back I sold a wrecked truck (ran/drove) but it needed a radiator/bumper/grill/headlights/airbag. Again sold on New Years Day and got full price. Truck was wrecked, I took the insurance check and bought a new truck, sold the wrecked one. All sorts of dumb calls, "can I drive it an hour?" Do you take trades?
Do you have the parts to fix it?....umm no. I had an estimate to the penny to fix it, not a single caller asked what the estimate was to fix it. Sold it in less than 2 weeks to a kid that was taking the bed off it and would fix the wrecked part, then put a wood stake bed on it and resell it in a farm town. Kid showed up with a diesel truck/flatbed trailer and took it away!
BTW, there is a way to search all Craigslist sites across the country. It's called SearchTempest, and it's very useful when you're looking for a specific item used.
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