Hey, stemming from another thread, I was curious to find out for trade ins how many people actually got close to or got the red book price
If so or didn't please leave what the redbook price was year and type of car and what the offer/kms/who was..
Me:
2019
Subaru 2011 Wagon
90k km
redbook price: 10k
Trade in offer from Phil Gilbert Parammataa at 6.5k
THIS.. SO MUCH THIS
I used to work in the trade back a few years ago and the most common thing i heard when valuing a trade in was "red book says its worth this much"
i would then show them private sale history and point out that their car sells for an average of $XXX and that the average listing time is XXX days/weeks/months
trade value is so much more than what the car is worth, is the dealer keeping it or wholesaling it? will it sell? What repairs does it need to make it sellable? Is their any demand for them? and so on.
Redbook is a private sellers enemy imho as it gives a false indication of a cars value even privately people tend not to get what RB says.
Exactly what spackbace says.
Redbook is best used as a rough guideline. 10k might be the approximate you might get for it as a private sale, but as you can imagine dealerships have to make a cut.
Have sold a few cars - for private sales, Redbook is not too bad of an estimate of what you would get and gives you a reasonable indication of what a general ballpark price is if you don't know the market well. I've gotten around Redbook prices, or a bit above for a good example (low km's, well kept…etc.) but never anything ridiculous.
Dealer trade-ins are different - whether you should choose to trade-in is a completely different matter, but you do have to accept getting less. Some people don't have time to prep their car for sale, host potential buyers, do test drives…etc. For an older car where the difference between the trade-in value and market value is small, I'd go trade-in.
Dealers on-sell trade-ins at market value ie Redbook prices. Since they need to make a profit, expect a lower price from dealers for trade-ins than selling it privately.
You only trade in to a dealer for convenience
Can be a difference between networked and independent dealer valuations too.
Meh, Redbook don't buy and sell cars. It's purely used for monitoring stamp duty values. Dealers don't bother consulting it, we have access to sales figures.
And it all depends on what needs to be done to the car (tyres, servicing, panel repairs), and whether the salesperson intentionally low-balled (under-valued)