Sell Your Car for the Most $$$ Possible (Expert Advice)

Are you tired of walking around everywhere? Are you sick of not being able to give your uncle a ride to the dialysis clinic? You have a sweet Garmin GPS but no windshield to stick it to? Hey folks, it's Rick Carman Hayes here. Come on down to Rick's Pretty Good Cars. We got all kinds of rides here. Volkswagens, Chevys, Volkswagens, even some scooters people left here. Missed our Labor Day sale? Don't worry, the prices are just higher now. So come on down to Rick's Pretty Good Cars and tell me I sent you. All right, I may not be a professional car salesman, but I have sold a car or two in my day. Two. It was literally two cars. Which does make me an amateur car salesman. And even an amateur knows you're going to get more money selling your car to a private party rather than trading it in to a dealership. So why do people even trade in their cars? Well, because it's easy. Like liking Coldplay or hating Nickelback. Very little effort involved. And that's why I respect the Nickelback fans. They're choosing a harder life. It can't be that bad. Can't be that bad. Okay, dude from Nickelback. But I get it. If you're already at the dealership, you're looking at a car, it's tempting to just trade it in and be done with it. Because when you want that new car, you want to get rid of the old one fast and furious. But you're also leaving money on the table. And yes, it takes a little bit of work. But today I'm going to take the guesswork out of it by talking to my friend, Tom. Now Tom's been in the car business for almost two decades now. And he sold thousands of quality used cars. And one of them he sold to me. So in today's video, we're going to give you some practical tips to sell your car for top dollar. But first, Tokyo drift on over to those like and subscribe buttons and give them a click. And share this video with everyone in your car club. And if you don't have one, here's an idea. Start your own. You and your buddies go buy some brown Honda Civics and call your club Civic Duty. See what I did there? All right, let's hit the pavement. Life is a highway. Jesus, take the wheel. Let's go. All right, guys, I'm here with my friend Tom from Genesis Auto Brokers. You're going, who's Tom? Well, Tom's the guy I bought my car from. And I had such a good experience that he's the guy I trust now in the car biz. How you doing? Great, man. I'm doing fantastic. Thank you for having me here today. Absolutely. You're hanging out with a famous YouTuber. That's right. How does that feel? It's a little intimidating, but I'm going to try and see my way through it. Well, you're the expert today. You're here today to show us how to sell our car and get top dollar for it. Because we're always telling people, hey, if you're in debt, you got to get a different car. Sell the car, top dollar, private party. You're going to show us the best way to do that with my example car. This is not my actual car. This is one of our friend's cars. And I want to know, how do I get top dollar in this current economy for my 07 Camry? So it's going to start with the day you buy the car. You want to make sure that when you buy that car, you start keeping records of all your services. So whenever you go to have an oil change or if you do it yourself at home, keep receipts, keep records, keep a logbook or a spreadsheet. The other thing is keep the car clean. So you don't have to pay somebody. Just wash the car, vacuum it out, clean out any stains every couple of weeks. Don't be gross in it. All right. So we have good receipts of all the maintenance, the repairs, the oil changes. We've tried to keep it as clean as we can. What do we do next? If there's some cosmetic things that you can do and you have to weigh what you're going to spend versus what you're going to get back. So some of the examples like these headlights, they're a little bit faded. So if you can find somebody that can refinish these for $25 to $50 a pop, that is going to make a really big difference. It's going to make those headlights look brand new without having to replace them. Some simple things on the inside, you can replace the floor mats. If the floor mats are faded and dingy, just get some new floor mats. You can get them from, you know, a Walmart or a Ross for $20 for some rubber mats. And that's going to make a big difference as well. So the next thing you're going to want to do is decide what repairs are worth investing in. And that you have to just go around, figure out what things are going to cost you, decide if it's going to get a return for you, and then go with what you think you can do and make that money back. Yeah. Don't spend a thousand bucks if it's only going to make you $300. So the car, we've cleaned it up. We've got the records. Yep. What's next? We got to take some photos? We're going to take some photos. The best time to take photos is either when it's cloudy out or early in the morning, evening time, because you're going to have one side of the car in light and the other side in shadow. Exactly. This is not the best time to take a picture of the car. No photos, please. And you're going to want to find a place, like a big parking lot like this, where you can get away from everything, but it's got a nice background. Would the next step be figuring out the price that you want to list it at? Because that's a very stressful part for everyone. They're going, how do I figure out what the accurate price is for a private party? Is there one site to go to? How do you figure it out? I like to look at different sites and figure out what the same car that I have with similar mileage, similar features, similar trim, what is it selling for on Facebook Marketplace, CarGurus, maybe eBay Motors, and that will help me to determine what I need to ask for my car. Where do you post it? Do you post in multiple places? Do you stick to one? My favorite sites right now are going to be Facebook Marketplace. That's where I would start because it's free and there are a ton of people looking at that. The next place would be maybe eBay Motors. If you've got a unique car that is more rare, CarGurus, AutoTrader, all those cost money. So you have to decide, is it worth putting it on there? A $40,000 car? Yes, it's probably worth putting on there. A $3,000 car? I wouldn't bother. I would just stick with Facebook Marketplace. That's free. Do you have a floor number of you're like, listen, I can't, I legitimately, I cannot go below $6,500. Absolutely. And it's smart to decide that ahead of time. If you've got it listed at $8,900, $8,000 is your floor. Try and stay $8,400 maybe. Hey, I came off $500. That's pretty good. And if they come back, you know what your floor is, but you have to decide that ahead of time. If you try and decide that in the moment, you're going to end up just keep going down and down and down. So what about when they say, hey, I need to take it to a mechanic to get inspected? Yeah. What's the right process for that? I would just find out where the mechanic is and then maybe just meet them there. And it just needs to be somebody reputable. Firestone will do a 120 point inspection on any vehicle for like somewhere between 20 and $50. Let's say they find a few things and they give you the list. Here's how much it would cost. Do you bring the price down by the repair costs and a little more? Definitely not. If the mechanic comes back and say there's $3,000 worth of repairs and this person's going, hey, you got to knock off $3,000. Don't be afraid to be like, you know what? Hey man, I appreciate your time. I can't come off that far, not even close and just walk away from the deal. That's good. So we've done all of our due diligence. We did the test drive. We brought it to the mechanic. We're at the bank. We do the cashier's check. It all checks out. What are the final steps? So you have a bill of sale. You want to have both copies signed. You keep one and they keep one. You want something that says you're selling the vehicle as is with no warranty. And then the title, you can sign that over to them. And then we're done. You're done. That wasn't so bad. Now it's somebody else's deal. Well, do you have a deal? Do we agree? Yeah. What's the price? $6,000. Oh crap. Got him. Got me. Hey, Tom, thanks so much. It's been fun hanging out with you. I learned a lot. I know all the wonderful people watching. I hope so. Absolutely guys. Thanks so much. Huge thanks to Tom for hanging out with us and showing us the ropes of selling a used car. And if you want to learn more about Tom's business, you can go check him out at genesisautobrokers.com. And if you want a deeper dive on everything cars from selling to buying to maintenance, check out our free car guide. I'll drop a link to both in the description. As always, make sure to subscribe to this channel. Like this video and share it with everyone in your life who would be willing to sell their soul for the right price. Listen, I'm not above it. You could score like 20 grand for a used Kia Soul right now. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.