Are you trying to sell a car? Then you need to know its value. But how do you go about it? It’s not like you can just look at the receipt and check, car values are more complicated than that since they lose value over time at an inconsistent rate. That’s why in this article we’re going to go over the easiest ways to find your car’s value.
Establish The Facts
The first thing you need to do when you’re trying to establish your car’s value is establish the facts. You need to know your car inside and out. Start with the basics: make, model, year, colour, engine. Then move on to more advanced facts like any damage the car has or any components that have been replaced since you first bought the car. You should also get a vehicle history report to find out all the info of the vehicle’s history as well.
Once you have all of this information you can establish how they’ll impact the value of the car, for example aftermarket parts will generally lower the value of a car, colours can have an impact on the price, and of course different makes and models have different levels of supply and demand that can help or hinder you.
Find Similar Cars
Even with all of this information there is no exact formula to calculate the value of your car, however with all this information you have 2 possible methods to figuring out an approximate value. The first one is to use popular car listing websites. With the information you have gathered on your own car you can find similar cars to compare and contrast with. Find as many as you can on multiple sites to see what the asking price of others is and take the average of that number.
Once you have that average and the maximum and minimum of the range you can place your car somewhere either above or below average using the specific conditions of your car.
Use Help
The other option if you’re having trouble establishing the value using the first method is to call in some professional help. There are several online tools you can use to calculate a car’s approximate value if you have all of the information gathered in step one. Or you can also take the car to be professionally appraised, however that option will cost you money, so if you can figure out the car’s value without getting it appraised that is the best option.