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Car Shopping Help :: Trade-In Values

Maximizing Your Car's Trade-In Value

Here's some quick used car trade-in tips that will get you at least $500 more when you trade-in your old car. Or, you can sell it yourself for even more.

Seven Trade-In Tips

  1. You’ll get the maximum amount (wholesale) from a dealer who sells your trade-in brand.

  2. You’ll lose at least $500 trading in your car to a different brand dealership because they won't sell it themselves. They resell it to another dealer or wholesaler.
     
  3. Take your trade-in to the dealer where you bought it or have had it serviced over the years and get a quote.
     
  4. Compare their trade-in quote to the Kelley blue book.
     
  5. Don’t take their first offer!
     
  6. Always ask for a little more by saying - “Can you do a little better?”
     
  7. Never trade-in where you are buying your car unless you’ve already explored all the alternatives.

Objectives:
1. Learn what tricks the dealer uses
2. Understand best way to proceed

Advantages:
1. Increase potential trade-in value
2. Maximize your trade-in price

Action Item:
1. Get your approximate trade-in value
2. Use Kelley Blue Book for wholesale & retail values

Time required:
1. Researching blue book value - 5 minutes

Where to begin
The first things you need to do are:

  1. Get your loan payoff amount
  2. Get your blue book value (wholesale and retail) from http://www.kbb.com
  3. Get your trade-in cleaned up and looking great

Best alternative sales strategies
There are several ways to increase the sales price of your used car versus trading it in at the dealership.

Here are the best ways to maximize your trade-in value:

  1. Sell it to a dealership for that specific brand
  2. Sell it to a used car lot
  3. Sell it through newspaper classifieds
  4. Sell it from a nearby high-traffic location
  5. Sell it online - (eBay Motors, Cars.com, Auto Trader)

Financing strategy
Remember, you don’t have to sell your old car immediately. Just float yourself a 0% loan from a special credit card offer like the one from Amazon.com.

You get 0% financing for a year on transferred balances. Just use an existing credit card check to replace the trade-in amount in your down payment.

Then, when you have your new Amazon credit card just write a check to pay off the old balance at 0% interest.

That’s sweet! Plus, you get a $25 Amazon gift certificate and earn more Amazon dollars every time you use the card.