How to bump up resale value of your car – 5 handy tips
If you’re in the market to sell your vehicle, it’s almost a given that you’ll need to haggle with the dealers, negotiate with prospective buyers, shoo the brokers away and so on. To ensure that you get the maximum money for your car, we present to you five simple tips that you must keep in mind while posting an advert for your vehicle:
Details
Mention full details. There’s no bigger bummer for a customer than finding a dented/repaired part of the product when he/she is almost done with finalising the purchase. If the vehicle has a history, mention that. Same goes with the registration papers, number of owners, and service history – if you present a detailed account of that (FSH – Full Service History), you can certainly manage to get a better value.
Get it serviced
Before putting an ad online, get the car serviced, detailed, and make it free from all the minor issues that could hurt the vehicle’s prospects. Also, if there’s a major work that needs to be done, mention that to the prospective owner clearly, and if you’re looking to get the maximum value for your vehicle, get the job done beforehand.
First impressions last very long, so if the car is not clean, the interested buyers will no longer be interested. Get some good photographs clicked of the car, and have detailed shots of the exterior, interior, and even places like engine bay. Not only will the buyer be more intrigued by the shots, it will be easier for him/her to choose your car over others.
Set the price right
The pricing is crucial here because not only is there a market rate almost predefined, you must also keep in mind that the customer will negotiate and try to bring the price down. To deal with it, keep two limits for your vehicle’s value: one is the maximum (close to the priciest example you can find in the market – search for it as a customer and you’ll know) and the other is the minimum (get it evaluated by a dealership and they’ll give you a price range – your minimum is likely to be more than the minimum offered by the dealership). Refer to resources like Indian Blue Book for further pricing details.
Where should you post?
The good thing about the Internet is that most of it is either nominal (in terms of pricing) or totally free. If you want better visibility for your product (on the web-based listings) choose the premium packs (not free) offered by various websites. Stick to market leaders (CarTrade and CarDekho) but don’t forget online classifieds like OLX and Quickr, because despite having a very basic website layout they (the latter) still garner huge traffic. If you’re posting the vehicle’s advert over multiple websites, please be consistent. Not only should the details be correct, ensure that there are no discrepancies.
And what about test drives?
To start with, don’t trust anyone blindfolded. Once a prospective customer comes for a test drive, don’t go alone. Have the full paperwork done before handing him/her the keys and the ownership. Same holds true if you’re selling the car to a dealer. It might sound tedious but do a background check especially in the latter’s case. Apart from your security, the background check will ensure that you don’t waste time on dealers with bad reputation, and the same goes for acquaintances.