Hey everyone!
I’m diving into buying and selling a car at the same time, and I’ve spotted that lots of sellers are listing their cars only on Facebook Marketplace, even really pricey ones.
I’m curious what you think is behind this. Is it to get more eyeballs without paying those Carsales fees? Or maybe to quickly sell a tricky car?
Also, I made a quick poll — how would you sell your car if you had to? Would love to hear your thoughts!
So… there's no monetary charge? Sounds free to me
Yeahp this. Carsales now charges $120+ to make an ad. Facebook is free.
@IgorPrev: Carsales posts related advertisements in different sections.they get paid by both sellers and advertising agencies.
@IgorPrev: Carsales also charge dealers if you message them so if you really hate a specific dealer it's a great thing to do
Time is a cost/resource.
@larndis: Id rather deal with a bunch of "is it available" and a few lowballers than spend for a paid ad.
I think he means free of monetary fee to list, but not not necessarily free of cost to the seller
the costs of using FBMP are not always monetary. The risk of being robbed at knifepoint is one of them for such a high value item.
… How does selling on carsales stop this?
YES IT IS
Unsubscribed.
dont know why you're getting downvotes.. you are objectively right.
You must pay to sell a car on Gumtree now and its become useless!
So facebook Marketplace is the last one standing that is free
But FREE doesnt make it any good.
So many itre kickers, ghosters and time wasters on Facebook
Serious sellers advertise AND sell on carsales
funny u say serious on car sales, i had a listing on carsales but ended up selling on market place for the listing price. i'd give market place a good few months next time before going on carsales.
I sold a $20k+ vehicle on Facebook Marketplace and was sold within a week.
I contemplated Carsales but i got turned away just because it took so long to fill in all the forms at some point it required me to fill in the VIN and manufacturing year and i just couldn't be bothered.
So, FB Marketplace was not just free but easier.
same. have sold 4 cars in the last few years (mostly worth between 5-15k). Each time taken proper photos and listed a detailed ad on CS and Gumtree.
I have never sold via CS, twice on Gum and twice on FB. I don't believe in CS anymore.
A licensed dealer will only pay wholesale, but there is little risk of a deluge of scammers. If you sell by any method privately, do your scam research.
We needed to sell my mother's low mileage Mits. Lancer, which was about 3yo with lots of dents. Had low offers and tyrekickers via FB and low and behold the 'sell car instantly' feature on carsales offered much more! Car was sold to dealer within 24hrs. well above expected due to very low mileage alone. Any other time ive tried the feature it gave me a very low offer…. but remember to give it a go!
Same here. Sold a 2017 Tucson Highlander. Heaps of tyre kickers on FB. Couldn't even get an offer over $20k. Got an instant offer from Carsales. Took the car to the dealer next day. Had $22.5k (above higher end red book trade in) in my bank 48 hours later.
Didn't know about this, just tried two cars and got 'sorry your car is not eligible for an instant offer'. Good option though
Is there a cost involved?
enjoy your tictoc lol
Do you mean tiktok?
Zoomers and their ilk with brain rot love tiktok.
Not this one.
Marketplace isn't ideal as you do get a lot of "last price" idiots etc but it is free and effective. Certainly in my experience not as dodgy as Gumtree for scammers.
You need to know what your car is realistically worth and price it accordingly, as some people appear to spend their lives low balling online in the hope they get lucky and can sell it on for a higher price. Genuine buyers will come if you've priced fairly and they're easy to spot, far more genuine in communication.
When buying always check the rego plate and beware those who hide it in ads. In NSW at least (service NSW) it shows the last 3 odometer records which normally would be at rego time each year. A lot of older cars with low kms have 3 recorded in 2025 meaning this has been done deliberately to obscure probably higher readings before then.
The good used cars that are fairly priced tend to go quickly. I needed a first car for my son recently and in the end after endless checking marketplace ads messaged in a couple of local Facebook groups to ask if anyone was selling. Ended up getting a 2007 Corolla in very decent condition from someone who lives a few doors up from us (they hadn't put it up for sale yet but were intending to) and at a great price.
Depends on the vehicle.
Cars move quickly on FBM especially if rarer. They are usually posted in car groups or clubs either first or co post.
The ones I look at dont even make it to Carsales.
selling a 10-year-old Kia Optima. Hoping to get 12-13K.
You mean 5-6k
your mean $500 right
9k to 12k seems more realistic. Unless it has particularly low kms.
selling a 10-year-old Kia Optima. Hoping to get 12-13K.
An Optima being sold by an optimist.
I guess you have to start somewhere in negotiations
Give it away before the engine dies.
Depends on what you’re selling and how much you want to deal with other people in the process. A lot depends on what you’re selling too, makes a huge difference on where you can sell it at first
selling a 10-year-old Kia Optima. Hoping to get 12-13K.
Isn't this just how life works? People are different and find different methods more comfortable based on their needs and experiences.
Your question could equally be:
1. Why do some people only sell on carsales?
2. Why do some people sell only to the dealer directly?
3. Why do some people only sell to friends and family?
4. Why do some people leave their unused car in the yard and not sell it for some extra cash?
People sell wherever they think will get them a sale. Marketplace gets way more eyeballs than carsales and it’s free, so I get it. I listed Marketplace, Gumtree and Carsales. Carsales got me the sale despite having 100x less views than Marketplace.
Going to be dealing with tire kickers and scammers either way, might as well go the free route lmao
Do they usually check under the bonut or nah?
No donuts no sale
Nah they just get straight to lowballing
Ok so your advertisement says priced to sell at 35,000, can you do 15,000 cash ?
… no????
Is this still available?
How about $500 cash t'day?
Depends, is it cold and hard
Like my ex gf described my hEaRt.
I always sell to the scrap metal merchant, no tyre kickers, no scammers, just paid by the tonne.
Avoids the car sales website monopoly. Now just to fvck realestate.com.au off as well
But relies on faceache monopoly.
Just from experience that seems to be where they sell, so saves effort to put them there rather than multiple places.
Similar question… Why do people sell on Fartbook but wont accept a private sale offer of 10% discount, but will then turn around and sell it to a dealer at a 40% discount?
I buy and sell bikes all the time because I like to try a lot of different motorcycles. Hold onto it for a year or 2 and just sell it to get something different… I always offer more than trade in but I am not paying retail to a private seller… But the amount of sellers that wont sell to me for a slight discount but then just turn around and sell it for a huge loss to a dealer… It's like "If I cant get full RRP for my bike no one gets it for less…
How do you know theyve sold it to dealers and how often does that actually happen?
When selling stuff, im ususally fairly firm on price initially, but the longer it drags on the more willing i am to accept less. Use dealers only as a last resort when desperate to sell. If you made an offer i didnt accept 6 weeks ago am i to expect you havent bought something else? And should i go back to all the offers later knowing they know im mlre despaete and their original offer will be lowered?
How do you know theyve sold it to dealers and how often does that actually happen?
They don't, it makes a good forum whinge though.
I can list on Carsales for $44 or Gumtree/Autotrader among others for free and reach buyers who can use a web browser. It's easy and free to create a Marketplace listing but it only reaches buyers with FB accounts. Your ability to privately sell anything comes down to your sales and marketing aptitude
Gumtree isn't free.
$19… shows how long since I listed one.
Yep, not worth it since they've done that.
$44? I haven't sold on carsales for quite a while now, but I've heard it starts from $200ish nowadays?
And of course, there's no simple fee chart you can look up to see, you have to enter all your cars details first and then carsales will concoct some number and charge you that.
I listed acar last week at just over $20k, was $150 for carsales.
$150 to list a car lmao. No wonder car sales is dying. Good riddance.
@nomoneynoproblems: That wasn't even the most expensive option 😂. It's insane, and apparently goes up with car value. The joy of the monopoly I suppose.
buyers with FB accounts
Literally anyone interested in buying a car has a FB account even if they don't use FB for anything else.
This. I know people (generally older) who don't do social media but have a FB account for Marketplace only.
All the times I have listed my car on carsales, I have sold it on facebook. I think maybe 1 out of 10 has sold on Carsales before facebook, and that car took 3-4 months to sell
I've listed 3 cars on both carsales and facebook. All 3 were sold on facebook. I've received more enquiries on facebook aswell.
Same experience. Cars ranging from $15-40K as well. Got contacted by used car salesmen on Carsales for a "quick cash deal" - ie. a low ball offer. Might be location dependent though - I'm in a capital city.
I'm currently trying to buy a fun little second car on marketplace and it's mental how hard it is to get onto something. It all moves so quickly, you have to be watching it all day if you want any hope of getting anything
What are you buying? A Toyota?
Not necessarily. A 90s pulsar or civic, a 2000s magna or jazz, just something in a manual
Now that's a surprise! I would have thought there is a less demands on manual cars
The genuine and well priced stuff does move quickly.
Getting a first car for my son recently, I posted in a couple of local Facebook groups with the price range and brands/models I was interested in. Had a few people get in touch and bought off one of them at a great price. Chances are I'd have missed out if they'd advertised it at that price, similar cars advertised on marketplace at around double the price I paid.
Carsales used to be around $60 per ad, now its $200 +, so everyones moved to fb because its free
Theres no way it costs them anywhere near $200 to host your ad, especially aith all the dealer ads on there. Total rip off.
They do dynamic pricing (like REA).
The more expensive the car, the more expensive the ad. It's a hussle.
Thats not dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing is where the change the price to get more or less businsss.
They are charging different rates according to preset factors. Wonder what dealer pricing is like.
Still a rip off.
@Euphemistic: You're right it isn't dynamic.
I believe dealers generally pay per enquiry, rather than for the ad listing (though, I'd expect there are some packages that they can buy, which is why some dealers have their names on their ads) - that's why it's so difficult to figure out which dealer the car is at. It's also an interesting game of how dealers try to circumvent this by putting up photos of the sat nav, or descriptions that are vague enough to pass Carsales filters but specific enough that a buyer can figure out the dealer.
@ol mate: The descriptions in the ad are often copy&paste jobs into every ad they list so googling the spiel will often get you the dealer.
"Come and shop at North North Eastern Sydney's 14th largest used car wholesaler and you will not only get a poorly priced used car, but be added to a marketing database for the rest of your life"
Sold 2 cars on marketplace $10k and 12k cos it was free and fast (edit: one was within 2 days, the other the following weekend).
I first started at dealerships when considering a tradein and was offered about 3-4k each.
Both sold to the 1st or 2nd inspector. I ignored about 20ish enquiries for each. Might have ignored some legit people but if it smelt vaguely of scammer or tyre kicker id just ignore.
You get the same number of potential tyre kickers / scammers irrespective of the site you use. With Car Sales charging so much it is the place for higher end value cars who can afford the margin and certainly is not the place to go for average second hand cars.
Sold a Nissan Navara on FBM a year ago. $45K.
How did you handle payment
Cash
Few months ago, bought a new car and needed to sell my old one. I am always happy to pay overpriced carsales fee as they delived results. This time around i have also listed it on FB markets as well. Was extremely surprised to realise that all of my interested parties and the buyer have all found me through FB marketplace. Not one caller was from CSales.
Same here, my last 2 cars were sold through FBM, while my add on CS produced no good offers except low ball from wholesalers!
I've sold cars in FB Marketplace, and Gumtree before that without paying for ads.
Plan has always been to list on Carsales if the cars hadn't sold in a month (no real urgency to sell them), but haven't needed to.
Surprisingly no real lowballers on the first 2. Most recent I had a few but it was probably reflective of the market.
Last car I listed on marketplace with zero effort while I was sorting over the changeover for the new car. I hadn't even sorted the RWC at this point. Had very little interest even from the scammers :P
One message was from a guy who was "looking at it for a mate who didn't have Facebook…"
So yeah… I get a random number to call, which I did. Older dude and his wife turn up, check it out and leave a deposit pending RWC before coming back with cash a few days later.
Years ago I had a $1,500 car listed on Carsales and had a message from an interstate guy who was claimed to be working on an oil rig or something like that and couldn't come look… yeah right… Well, this guy transfers the full amount and says he will be by to collect it. A couple of weeks of me messaging him saying WTF then out of the blue a tilt tray turns up to collect it.
So I've had the legit side of dodgy sounding buyers!
Personally, I was also that weird interstatsh buyer. I bought that same $1,500 car from far enough away that I flew into a regional airport because it was a bit of a bargain. All the photos were good, the guy sounded legit and my only real question was "would it manage interstate drives?"… he said it was in good nic and wouldn't have any issues so I agreed to come see it and flew in, paid the man and drove it home.
I recently sold a car and had it advertised at FB marketplace and carsales.com.
The only inquiries I got was from FB, not a single message or call from carsales. Same price, same description, same photos.
I suspect that people mostly use carsales for searching dealer cars?
Have sold 2 cars on FBMP. Both ~$2k and sold on the day they were listed.
I've sold two cars on FB/marketplace.
A modified Skyline through a Skyline group, was a quick sale without any issues.
A modified WRX, a dealer reached out to me and I said you're probably wasting your time but make me an offer.
We agreed on a price that I already had on my mind, he said there isn't a lot of profit in the car sale but a young bloke will buy it on finance and take out an extended warranty and that's where his profit will come from.
I sold a Toyota using marketplace and car sales.
Car sales was a pain, I paid good money to have offers of half its value or scammers working offshore wanting to pay unseen.
The sale came from FB and I got the amount I wanted.
Currently trying to sell a Tesla Model3 Long Range 2022 as I’ve upgraded to ModelY with starting a family.
I listed on Markeplace first since free and was getting stupid offers over 50% off asking prices and preaching crazies
So I fronted up the 270 or so for Carsales after a month or so of no real progress on marketplace
Carsales has been probably worse with zero engagement from messages to offers etc and the view stats are quite low and their page ranking percentage and even incognito searching isn’t giving much preference and I’m not paying more for a premium listing considering the lack of progress
I’ve also tried Carma and Tesla and some others on the instant offers and they are insanely low offered compared to market prices.
Marketplace has been most progress realistically even with now 3months later price drops over and over still no engagement in the past few weeks
I experienced pretty much the same last year trying to sell my Ute. Heaps of low balls, highest offer I got was $17k, from someone new to Australia who was going to drive up from 5 hours away (seemed dodgy).
I ended up calling some of those 'We buy cars' websites. After a 5 minute phone call discussing the history of the ute, etc.. he offered $17.5k subject to viewing and roadworthy. He came and viewed it, was all OK. Gave me the number for a onsite roadworthy guy (which was quite cheap), and passed the road worthy no issues. We then signed all the paper work. He let me keep driving it for 10 days until the day I left the country, picked up and paid via PayID on the day, no dramas.
I never thought those sites were legit, but he saved me so much hassle. I would have liked $1-2k more, but there was no way I could have got that on Facebook or carsales.
Used Tesla's have plummeted in value. Could it be you are asking too much?
probably but i also don't want to lose out as well so there's a balancing act there..
2 year old and 50% new off i thought was going to be good enough, plenty of others higher than my current listing with more km's etc.
Got a link to the listing?
Here IS what from the river to the sea screamers pay for being brainless:
And what do the holy land birth-right genocide supporters pay for being brainless?
Facebook is free