It’s the age old question when it comes time to get rid of an old car, do you take it to the dealership and trade it in? Or do you try and sell it yourself instead? While ultimately it comes down to your personal choice and situations, we’ve prepared 3 reasons for each to influence your choice one way or the other.
Reasons to Sell Your Car Privately
More Money: The most important reason as to why you may want to consider selling privately is that you’ll get more money for the car. Since you get to set the price yourself you can charge exactly what the car’s worth and you only need to accept a deal when you’re actually happy with it.
Cash: When you sell a car privately you get that money in cash, which if you take it to a dealership for trade in you do not get and cash means that you’re not committed to immediately spending that money on another car. If you’re selling a car without the intention of buying a new one then that would be ideal.
Freedom of Choice: Even if you are planning to buy another car, having the money in cash means you aren’t limited to buying from 1 dealership. You don’t even have to buy from a dealership at all. You can sell your car privately and then buy another car privately as well.
Reasons to Trade-in Your Car
Simplicity: the trade off you make with a private car sale is that it’s a massive hassle. Selling a car privately is a long and tedious process of setting up ads, screening buyers, negotiating, and then repeating the whole process again when it all falls apart. With a dealership you skip all of that. You’re dealing with a professional who handles all of the paperwork and all of the drama. You may even be able to wrap the whole thing up in a single day, compared to the weeks or even months it may take to sell privately.
Trade Up: when you trade into a dealership you do not get cash but instead credit that’s applied to the price of the next car you buy. What makes this such a great perk however is that the credit is applied pre-interest, meaning that the loan you take out on the new car is cheaper than it would have been if you had sold the car privately and then taken out a loan on the same car.
That’s all we got! Thanks a lot for reading. If you’re interested in trading in your car, we’d love to help with that! Click here to contact us today.