Rev up your engines, today I'm going to talk about five things
that you should do when selling your car if you want to get the most money you possibly
can, now the first thing you have to realize is
people are like crows they like shinny objects, if you're missing a hubcap hey then do what
I do, go to a place like autozone get a set of 4 nice shinny hubcaps, they don't cost
much maybe $30-40 believe me you get more than your money back when the car looks better
with all shinny hubcaps, and speaking of shinny, either wash and wax
your car or take it to one of those places that does it and get everything detailed,
the shinier it looks the more you're going to get for the car it's just human nature,
and speaking of human nature look under the hood, you have a dirty greasy engine like
this, people are going to look under the hood and think, oh it wasn't taken care of, now
yes I don't normally advice cleaning under the engine,
it doesn't really serve any purpose but when you're selling a car, a lot of people don't
know that much about cars, they open the hood and it's clean and they'll think, oh it was
taken care of, their not going to get a compression gauge
and check the compression in your cylinders in most cases, they're just going to be looking,
so you want to make sure that it looks good under there,
pay a detailer to do it if you don't want to do it yourself, they got spray waxes and
stuff to make it look a lot better, now the next thing you want to do is figure
out how far do you want to go in fixing your car before you sell it,
take this dent on the bumper where the plastic is ripped off, to actually fix this, most
body shops these days are going to cost $400-500 to either fix it, paint it, or replace it
and paint it, in that case you have to decide how much is your car really worth, now if
it's a late model car, it would probably be worth fixing because your going to get a lot
more money for it, but hey this Toyota is 20 something years old, you know you're not
going to get that much for it, so something like this, you knock a few hundred bucks off
the asking price of the car, and the same thing goes for the paint,
let's say you got a car and the paint is all faded and it looks like garbage then you might
think, oh you'll go to one of those $200-300 paint jobs where they'll paint the whole car
for $200-300, it won't look perfect but it will make the car look so much better that
you'll get a lot more than $200-300 more when you sell it,
but if you've got a car that has a sort of bad paint job, putting on a cheap paint job
actually may make the car go for less money, somebody might decide, oh their going to buff
it all out, maybe reclearcoat it, but painting a whole car correctly these days goes anywhere
from $3,000-5,000 and up, so you're not going to spend that kind of
money when you're selling a car, unless you're selling a real high end car,
now the next thing to do before selling your car is make sure that it's full of oil and
the oil is clean, I've had customers bring me used cars that
they were thinking about buying and when I checked the oil and found out that not only
is it really dirty, but it's low on oil, that tells me hey, the
engine is worn, it's burning oil, it's dirty it hasn't been taken care of, I tell them
not to buy that car, so even if you've been kind of bad and haven't
changed your oil enough, change it before you sell it, then it's full,
it's clean and you're going to have a better chance of getting more money when you sell
it, now the next thing to do is to check the tires,
these are pretty good tires they have a lot of tread they look good, you just leave them
alone, but let's say you got a bunch of bald tires,
or their old and their all cracked, you might think about putting on the cheapest tires
you can buy that at least will look good, sure I don't advise you to buy the cheapest
tires you can get your hands on if you're going to be driving your car a long time,
but if you're selling it, new tires that are shinny, that aren't cracked, they look safer,
they make the car look all around better, and if you have any kind of a minor problem
with your front end or something, new tires that are put on and properly balanced, their
not going to shake or shimmy and the car is going to be easier to sell,
and when it comes to making your car looking good before you sell it, don't forget all
the rubber trim, this is old faded trim, and I found that this all American armor silicone
based cleaner and conditioner works best on trim,
silicone cleans really well and protects and makes it real shinny,
you just wipe it all over the rubber, just look at all the black crud that comes off
of this thing, and strangely enough, this stuff smells like
an old fashioned cherry soda, it actually smells good,
then you buff the heck out of it and now it's nice and shinny,
and above all, don't forget to do the interior, if somebody is driving the car they sit in
it, that's the part that they want to see nice and clean,
now the last thing I'm going to talk about when it comes to selling your car is large
mechanical issues, if you know the car has an engine problem
or a transmission problem, you're generally never going to get your money back if you
have an engine that's starting to go out you don't put another engine in the car and then
sell it, because you'll never get back that large amount
of money in most cases, now of course, if your brakes are grinding,
yeah put new brake pads on so their not grinding anymore,
you can get brake pads for $19 at some places, that kind of stuff yeah you got to fix that,
but if you have a transmission that's starting to slip and stuff, you don't have it rebuilt
before you sell the car because you're never going to get back your investment,
if you want to get the most money for your car, you try to sell it yourself, if you try
to sell it to a used car lot, or a place that sells cars for a living, their going to give
you as little as possible because they have to sell it themselves and make a profit,
but if you don't want to deal with the public when selling your car, my advice is this,
find a good consignment seller, theirs guys out there that they'll take your car on consignment
and they get a percentage of the price and they try to sell it for you,
because if you have a car that people really want,
these guys know which cars are most popular, the most they can possibly get and of course
their going to try to sell it as high as possible because their getting a percentage of the
sales price, if it goes cheap they won't make much money,
and above all, if you are selling your car, don't trade it in, when you trade them in,
they give you practically nothing for the car, always try to sell it yourself or through
a consignment dealer, because I know a car dealer here in Houston,
he sells used cars and he tell people, if you're going to buy a new car come to me,
I'll get you a better deal, all you have to do is sell me your car at the trade in value,
he made so much money getting the trade in value and selling them higher, he would buy
you a car, go to the dealer, he was a car dealer so he know how to barter, and you'd
get a few thousand dollars off, which you could have done yourself anyways, but then
he got your car cheap and he made most of his money just selling all these used cars
that he got at the trade in value, so now you know the best way to sell your used car
to get the most money for it, so if you never want to miss another one of
my new car repair videos, remember to ring that bell!