So, you've decided to have a car trade-in. You know selling your car yourself will net you the best deal, the one-stop shopping convenience of buying a new car and trading in the old at the dealership seems to be the quickest way to get everything done at once, basically less hassle for you. The trouble is, dealers have experience on their side, they strive to do what is known as "steal the trade", and extracting the best deal out of the dealership takes research. Below are the best ways to navigate a car trade-in:
- Retail to Retail or Wholesale to Wholesale? 99.999% of the time the dealership will want to take your trade-in for less than wholesale pricing and of course they will want to sale you their vehicle at full retail pricing. So to cut through the chase, simply tell them that you want a fair deal and to that, they will need to offer you wholesale to wholesale or retail to retail.
- What's your cars value? Do yourself a favor! Research your current vehicles realistic value prior to going to the dealership as it will help prepare you for initial shock of what your "prized" vehicle is worth to the dealership and it will give you a good idea of what you should expect for your trade-in. Every time, I do the following:
- Go to Kelly Blue Book, www.KBB.com,
- Select my vehicle by year, brand and model
- enter my mileage by rounding up to the next thousand miles
- choosing the style that most closest matches my vehicle
- I do not add any options
- choose trade in to a dealer
- choose good for my vehicles condition, even if its excellent
- I print this valuation off so I will know the lowest value of my car
- Next I would go back and
- add all the options that my vehicle has
- choose trade in to a dealer
- choose the actual condition of my vehicle
- I print this valuation off so I will know the realistic value of my car
- I would also look for local retail prices of vehicles similar to mine and print these off as well
- You might also perform the same steps at www.NADAguides.com as they provide all the values from rough trade to clean retail on one page.
- Clean up the vehicle. Would you buy a filthy car? Good News! The dealership will be more than happy to buy your filthy car, at much less than wholesale pricing. This will only cost you about $1,000, no problem right? Do yourself a favor and take your vehicle to the local car wash and spend the extra money to get the delux car wash as this will ultimately save you hundreds of dollars, worst case is at least you'll be driving around in a nice and clean vehicle. Who knows, you may want to just keep your current vehicle. Also, please note that you will want to remove any stickers or items that don't belong to the original vehicle, especially those racing and or performance stickers.
- Is your vehicle paid off? That's the first thing a dealership wants to know about your vehicle. If it's not paid off, you should call your finance company and obtain a ten day pay-off just so you know how much it is as some dealerships will over inflate this number to increase their bottom line profit. Most will ask for a thirty day payoff and they will actually pay it off in two to three days instead.
- Did the dealership really misplace your keys, registration or drivers license? Most likely not! Chances are that they are simply choosing to misplace them to keep you at the dealership. I've seen some really bad managers and salespersons throw the customers keys on the roof of the building roof because the customer was or is particularly
hard to take advantage of or the customer just doesn't know better and the sales team know this. I've personally had my vehicles registration "accidentally" shredded. You can avoid most of this game playing by simply showing them your registration or bringing in a copy for them, and also by letting them use your spare key and only the spare key itself.