Selling a car can seem like a very daunting task if you’ve never done it before. But this doesn’t have to be the case! The way you sell your car depends a lot on your current situation and preferences (financial, time, ease, etc.). We’re going to walk through the steps you’ll want to take to sell your car for a good price at minimal stress!

Preparation for Selling your Car

If you’re planning to sell a car in Brantford there’s some things you’re going to want to do to make sure everything goes smoothly. After all, the last thing you want is to get through all of the negotiation, have someone come and see the car and then decide they don’t want it anymore. By following our tips to prepare a car for sale in Ontario, you can make sure that doesn’t happen.

Fix What’s Broken

The first thing you’ll want to look into when you prepare to sell a car in Ontario, and also the one that’s most likely to eat into your resale value if you don’t do it, is find and possibly fix any mechanical issues. Take the car around to a local mechanic and get the car a thorough once over.
 
If there’s a minor issue like a burnt out tail light then you should fix it without question. If there’s a major mechanical problem that will require a significant investment then you have to figure out the math.

Know how much your car is worth and how much it will cost to repair the issue, if it’s going to cost more than the amount you’d get for selling it then it’s not worth fixing. Instead make sure you have a clear understanding of the problem and are able to explain it to a potential buyer.

Thorough Cleaning

Looks are important when you’re trying to sell a car, and dirt has a way of making a car look older than it really is. Before you try to sell the car, give it a deep cleaning both inside and out. Wash away all the dirt and give the body work a nice polish while you’re at it.

Inside vacuum all the floor mats and the seats, clear out all of your own stuff from the car, even things like driving gloves or dashboard accessories, you want the car looking and feeling as new as you can possibly manage

Extra Touches

Once the cleaning is done make sure you follow that up with some extra touches, make sure all the seatbelts are untangled and sitting in their proper place. Reset the seats to their default position. Lubricate the doors to get rid of any squeaks. You want to do everything so thoroughly that the buyer won’t even notice them, which is a little ungratifying but it will make the sale go much smoother.

Paperwork

If you still have the car’s manual from the initial sale that’s a nice little extra to throw in, however what you’re really looking for is the car’s paperwork, and if you don’t have it on hand you need to get it.

You’ll want service and maintenance records that show exactly how the car’s been treated, and you want a record of the car’s history as well, the buyer may not ask, but you should be prepared for them nonetheless.

Documents Required to Sell a Car in Ontario

The absence of appropriate paperwork may reduce the value of your vehicle and make potential buyers look elsewhere. Having all your paperwork prepared is also a great way to relieve stress about selling your vehicle.

The title: This is the most important paperwork needed to sell your car. People that still have a lien will need to tell the holder about the sale. You must pay the amount you owe before the title is given to the new owner. If you’ve misplaced your title can ask your local authorities to purchase another title.

Bill of sale: This document keeps a record of all information on the operations between the buyer and seller. While not always legally binding, having a written record of the transaction, signed by both seller and buyer covers you from most issues that might arise later.

Used Vehicle Information Package: This is only required if you’re selling a car privately in Ontario. The UVIP is purchased on the government of Ontario website for $20.

Lien release: Proof that you paid off the car loan and are ready to sell. A lien is a legal claim to your vehicle, and a new owner will not be able to register the car in their name without paying the lien. Therefore, by having the lien release ready in advance, you are making your life much easier. Remember, if you’re looking to sell a car in Ontario that still has a loan on it, you can sell it to a dealership.

Car service record: These documents show what work was performed on the vehicle and when it took place. This helps show the vehicle was properly maintained, which can help you get the most money possible for the car. If you are not able to find all of them, you can contact the shop that did the work and ask them to provide you with a copy.

Warranty paperwork: The chances of finding a buyer can quickly increase if your vehicle is under the company’s warranty or extended warranty. If you still have a warranty, make sure to provide a copy when selling the car.

Signs it Might be Time to Sell your Car

There are so many different reasons to sell a car, but it’s not always easy to finally make that decision. How do you know when it’s the right time to sell? If you wait too long you won’t get a better price for your car, and if you sell too early you might be losing money on a car that has years to go. Here are 4 signs that it might be time to sell.

It’s costing more than it’s worth: If you’re consistently running into new problems with your vehicle that need a significant investment to fix, then it’s most likely time to sell your car. We recommend looking up the value of your car and compare it to the amount you’ve been spending to keep it on the road.

The only reason to keep investing in a car like this is an emotional attachment, which isn’t necessarily a valid reason! But just be aware that you’re at a loss for doing it.

It no longer fits your lifestyle: Maybe you’ve just had a kid and need a bigger car to accommodate for this change in your life. Perhaps the opposite is true and your last kid just left for college. Maybe you just lost your job and can no longer afford to keep the car on the road.

Whatever the case may be, ask yourself if the car is causing you more trouble that it’s worth. If not, then it’s time to sell.

It’s fully paid off: Of-course paying off a car doesn’t mean its instantly time to sell. There are many benefits to minimizing debt. However, cars are much easier to sell once they are paid off.

It’s about to hit 150,000km: Mileage is always important when trying to sell a car. The more mileage, the less it’s worth. Which means you’re going to have a harder time selling it. Common wisdom says sell a car before it reaches 150,000km because many people consider the car “too used”. In reality, cars can drive much further than that but it doesn’t really matter much when trying to sell.

Should you Sell your Car Privately or to a Dealership?

This Feels like the age old question but in reality, there is no one true answer to this question. There are too many different variables and situations where we can easily state that one way prevails over the rest. So, what we’ll do is give you all of the reasons to sell your car in these ways. This way, you’ll be able to sell your car in the way that feels like the best option for your particular situation.

Reasons to Sell Your Car to a Dealership

Less hassle: This is arguably the biggest (and most valid) reason to sell your car to the dealership. The old saying “time is money” is especially apt when it comes to selling your car. Selling a car privately comes with a lot of time, stress, and hassle. With a dealership you simply drive in, negotiate a price and walk away. That’s it! Quick and easy. Consider the money you lose as a payment for making the process so much easier.

Security: This is another important benefit of selling your car directly to a dealership. When you sell your car privately, you’re at risk of thieves scammers and con artists. These could be people that are looking to scam you out of a car, steal it, or even just waste your valuable time.

With dealerships, you can rest easy knowing you’re working with trustworthy (in most cases) professionals.

Trade-in: If you decide to trade in your car to a Brantford dealership, you’ll get credit to put down towards your next one. Trading in your used car is a great way to save money on your replacement because the overall loan amount on your next car is less which is important when it comes to interest rates.

Trading in is especially helpful if you’re going to need a new car as soon as you replace your old one.

Reasons to Sell Your Car Privately (Online)

More money: This is the most important reason you’d want to consider selling your car privately instead of to a dealership in Brantford. Since you get to set the price for yourself, you only ever need to accept a deal your actually happy with. Also, a private buyer doesn’t need to pay any additional costs for the vehicle like a dealership does.

Cash: when you sell your car privately, you get that money in cold hard cash. Cash means that you’re not committed to immediately spending that money on another car. This is ideal when you’re selling a car without the intention of buying a new one.

Freedom of choice: Compared to trading in, when you sell your car privately you aren’t limited to buying from 1 dealership. You don’t even have to buy from any dealership at all, you could end up buying your next car privately.

How to Maximize Profits when Selling a Car Privately

If you’ve chosen to sell your car privately. Here’s everything you’ll need to do to keep the process fast, smooth, safe, and as profitable as possible.

Draft and impressive advertisement: There are many different online platforms you can use to sell your car privately such as Kijiji Autos or Facebook Marketplace. Once you’ve decided which you’re going to use, you’ll want to create an enticing advertisement for your vehicle.

• Make sure to get some high quality picture vehicle’s interior, exterior, wheels, and unique attributes of the car.
• Write up an impressive title and description for your listing that will get potential buyers interested in the car. The listing should include the VIN, condition, mileage, and any other pertinent issues with the vehicle.
• You might want to get your hands on a vehicle history report.

Give the Car a Good Cleaning: You’re used to your car already looking a certain way, but you’re going to want to make it look brand new. We recommend bringing your car to a detailer who will make your car shine. While this is a modest investment on your end, it will be worth it in the long run when you sell your car for your full asking price.

Allow Test Drives: Potential buyers will want to to take the car out for a spin before making an offer. Test drives help answer questions, and grow desire for the vehicle which could encourage the buyer to make a decision (and maybe even pay more for it!).

How to Prepare Your Car for Test Drives when Selling Privately

If you’ve bought a car before, you’ll know how crucial it is for you to test drive it before buying it. This is why you need to prepare your car for potential test drives. How do you ensure this process is safe, secure, and everything goes safely? We’ll explain here.

Screen buyers: While the vast majority of people would never be so bold as to attempt to steal a car during a test drive, that doesn’t mean it never happens. Which means this worst case scenario is something you might want to prepare for.

The best way to prepare for this is to weed out the potential trouble makers. You can do this simply by giving them a phone call ahead of time. It’s much harder to hide tone over the phone compared to text messaging. Over the phone you’ll have a much easier time determining if they are actually serious about buying the car.

If you are selling the car through Facebook Marketplace, we recommend you check out their profile and make sure everything seems legitimate.

Meet in public: When selling your car, try to always arrange to meet a potential buyer in a busy, public area during the day. Even if the buyer seems trustworthy, we still don’t recommend you meet at your home! Also, if you’re still feeling anxious it might be a good idea to bring along a friend to the potential sale and even during the test drive.

Tag along: We suggest you don’t let the stranger drive your car without you in it. This is a surefire way to prevent the car from being stolen and lets you answer any questions the potential buyer might have when testing out the car.

How to Negotiate when Selling a Car Privately

Whatever the situation may be, negotiating is not easy for a lot of people. Don’t push hard enough and you might end up with a bad deal, but push too hard and the buyer might lose interest completely. It doesn’t have to be scary though. There are a few tips and tricks you can use to ace your next negotiations with confidence.

Come in prepared: As the old saying goes; if you fail to prepare then you are preparing to fail. Preparing for the car selling negotiation is the most important decision you can make. The more you prepare, the more confident you’re going to feel (and portray) about what your saying.

To prepare for negotiation when selling your car, you need to know exactly how much it’s worth. That means not only exactly how much it was worth in an ideal sense, but also what it’s actually worth based on the unique condition of your vehicle.

You’ll also want to find any information that might be helpful to the buyer, such as a vehicle history report, prices to fix any damage on the vehicle, or the speedometer reading.

Find the middle ground: Negotiations are all about finding middle ground, a point that both parties can agree on. With car sales, it can be quite unlikely to sell a car at a price you actually listed it for, so prepare to be reasonable and lower the price if you need to.

Figure out before hand the lowest dollar amount you’ll accept for your vehicle. Once you know what is a good deal and what is not, you’ll be more firm and confident, but not rude.

Don’t rush: Many people don’t realize that the sale of a car doesn’t have to happen in a single day. If things are getting too tense or you’ve just hit a brick wall then it’s totally reasonable to call it a day and return at a later date.

Remember, never be afraid to walk away if you’re not being offered a fair deal for your car. There are plenty of buyers in the Ontario market who will be interested in your ride.

Other Ways to Sell Your Car

We’ve covered the two main ways you can sell a car in Brantford, but those aren’t the only ways. There are 3 other ways you can get rid of your old car which we’ll cover below.

Auction: in this case, your vehicle would be appraised by the auction service at a listed price. If the bids on the vehicle are lower than the list price, the car is not sold. This is a much less common way to sell your car and is generally only used by dealerships.

Scrap it: This is the worst case scenario and means your car is at the end of its life, but needs to be done if your car is dead, On the bright side, someone from the scrapyard will pick up your car for you and hand you some cash. You don’t even need to clean it! It’s the fastest and easiest way to sell a car, but you’ll get much less money than other alternatives.

Street advertising: Simply parking your car close to a highly populated area with a for sale sign on the window! Make sure to leave your contact information so people know how to reach you.

How to Sell a Car after a Crash

Selling your vehicle after it has been in an accident or breaks down can be quite the challenge, but don’t give up yet. Here’s our quick guide on how to sell a car after an accident in Ontario.

Assess the damage: This should be your first step. Take thorough notes of all the issues both major and minor around the car. These notes will be used in two ways: showing to potential buyers, and calculating the cost of fixing the issues.

While it might seem like the repairing the car is something you need to do before selling it, this isn’t always the case. Depending on the problem, all of the repairs might actually cost you more than what you would get for selling the car fixed. If this is the case, you’ll want to sell your car as is to a scrapyard, someone who will sell it for scrap, or someone looking for a project car.

Without much car knowledge it might be troublesome to get an accurate estimate on how much the damages will cost to repair. IF this is the case, we recommend you get a quote from a mechanic.

Once the car is been fixed, we recommend you sell it in a way that you would sell any other car, which is totally up to you.

If the car is completely dead: the car will be regarded as a total write off, which means it has been damaged beyond repair. If this is the case, it’s possible that the only option will be to send it to the scrapyard. Before you do that though, it may be worthwhile to investigate the car yourself. Just because the car is a write off doesn’t mean there’s nothing for you to salvage.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Where/how should I sell my electric car?

A. Just like you would a normal car! As always make sure you have a great listing and be able to answer any question about your EV that the potential buyer might ask.

Q. Can I sell my car with a loan on it?

A. Yes! But you need to sell it to a dealership. Otherwise, you’ll need to get a loan settlement figure and pay off the loan before selling.

Q. Should I sell my car if I’m not using it?

A. In 2022, yes. Used car prices are at an all time high and if you aren’t using it, it’s a great way to bring in some money.

Q. Should I repaint my car before selling?

A. Usually no. If the car is it’s very unlikely you’ll make more money by repainting it first (unless its a classic!). Especially depending on how much the paint job costs.

Q. Where/how should I sell my classic car?

A. The best way is to post a listing online or by bringing your classic car to a car show/event. Alternatively, many dealerships will still buy classic cars.

We hope this article gives you some good direction on how you want to go about selling your car in Ontario. Remember, if you want an easy and quick way to sell your car for good money, Fill in our form by clicking here. We’d love to buy it and we don’t even need you to buy another car from us. Thanks!