How to Negotiate the Sale of Your Used Car

Don't try to take anyone for a ride, but don't just dump the car to get rid of it, either.

Difficulty: Moderately challenging

Instructions

1. Confirm that the interested party has decided to buy the car.

2. Ask him or her, pleasantly, to make you an offer.

3. Keep your bottom-line price in mind, but do not state it.

4. Wait before making a counteroffer if the buyer's offer is too low.

5. Explain your hesitance briefly, mentioning repairs or the possibility of receiving better offers. Judge the buyer's interest as you speak.

6. Make a counteroffer.

7. Leave your counteroffer on the table if the buyer rejects it, suggesting that you will continue to show the car.

8. Offer the buyer, pleasantly, an opportunity to call later if he or she reconsiders the counteroffer.

Tips & Warnings

• Your counteroffer should not be too high unless the buyer's offer was unusually low.
• Several rounds of offers and counteroffers are usually not necessary if both parties keep fairness in mind.
• Don't be too stubborn - just stubborn enough to indicate that you're holding to your bottom line. Make sure that's understood.

on 8/1/2006 If selling a car which is used and unusually low in price, a selling point which protects you and gives the buyer an incentive is offering to write the vehicle up for a lower price on the Title to save the buyer sales tax. Each state has a different vehicle sales tax and perhaps even a lemon law.

Example: 5% registration tax on 1,000 dollars is 50$. If you want to sell the car for 1,000 dollars, but your lemon law states you're responsible for ensuring the car has no serious mechanical issues for 30 days on cars above $550 -- then you can write the vehicle sold for 500 on the title, this saves the buyer $25 in sales tax, and protects you from having to guarantee the vehicle if say by unfortunate and unknown reasons the vehicle does encounter a serious problem post-sale.

Obviously it's in the sellers best interest to make sure the vehicle is safe and mechanically sound before making a sale, otherwise that's just poor character, but pricing a private sale is between you and the buyer, not you and the government, thus you can sell the vehicle for whatever you want on "your" title and if the buyer gives you an extra 500 cash that you leave unaccounted for -- hey, ..... that's just smart business sense.

on 11/22/2005 When you're selling your car, make the asking price a bit higher than what you originally want, so when you and the potential buyer are bargaining and he asks to take a few hundred off for any reason, you will still get what you wanted in the first place.