Should I Sell My Car to a Dealership? What if I Still Owe Money?

How to sell a car at a dealership

If we’re being honest, selling a car to a dealership is, realistically, not that difficult. It really isn’t that different from selling to any sort of prospective buyers.

However, there are a few important steps you should follow when doing so to ensure that you get the best price you can for your used car.

Prepare your car for sale

This seems pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised by the amount of people that come in to trade in a car that is extremely dirty. If you take a few hours to spiff your used vehicle up – vacuum it out, wipe the windows and exterior down, clean the trunk out – you can easily max out the estimate that car dealerships will give you.

It takes time for you to go out of the way and do this, and its not necessarily the easy way of selling your car, but if you really do want the best offer you can get, this is important to do.

Determine your car’s value with an online tool

But before going in to a dealership to get an estimate, you should figure out what your car’s estimated value is online. There are a ton of free tools online to do this like:

• Consumer Reports Car Value Estimator
• Kelley Blue Book Instant Used Car Value & Trade In Value Calculator
• Edmunds Instant Used Car Value and Trade In Calculator

If you’re on a time crunch, pick one of these tools and use that as a starting point. Or, what we’d recommend is to get an estimate from each of these tools and take the average trade-in value to get the most accurate estimate of what your car is worth. But, also note the highest estimate – this’ll be important for the next step.

Get offers from multiple dealers

Now, you can go around to different dealers to get estimates from them on what they would offer you. If you mention what the highest estimate you got was from the aforementioned online tools, you can also use that number to haggle for a higher price with many dealers.

If you make a potential buyer aware of the higher estimate you’ve received, or even mention that you have multiple offers already on your vehicle, this may work to your favor.

Pick your best choice

Now that you’ve gone to a few different dealerships, weigh out the different offers you’ve received. Does one dealer offer an instant cash offer, or does it seem like dealers are lowballing you compared to what online tools tell you your car is worth?

If this is the case, it might be a good idea to explore a few different dealers to see if they can offer you a better deal. Or, at worst, you can reach out to a private buyer to see what they may offer you; more often than not, a private party will offer instant cash offers along with quicker sales, but may be less secure than selling to certified dealers.

How to sell your vehicle to Deery of Ames

As mentioned above, we all know that selling on the private market means time, lowball offers, and the insecurity of giving your keys to a stranger. Luckily, selling your car outright to Deery of Ames is as easy as can be!

Not all Ames, IA car owners realize that they can easily sell their car to a dealership, often for more than KBB Fair Value. That’s because dealers like Deery of Ames always need more used vehicles, and want the chance to resell yours.

Dealers can also do all the paperwork in-house, which means you can get the sale completed quickly in one sitting. That means visiting a dealership to sell your car is the easiest, safest, and often the most profitable way to sell your car.

If you have a vehicle you’ve been thinking of selling, get a quote from Deery of Ames, and get the most for your vehicle.

What if you have a car loan?

If you want to sell your car but still have a loan, there’s no need to worry. There are several options available, even if you owe more than the car is worth.

If you are selling on the private market, you will want to get all your loan paperwork, and speak to a representative to make sure you have everything you need. The Payoff Amount is one of the most important things to know, even before you start the process.

But what if your Payoff Amount (the lump sum it takes to pay loan in full) is more than the car is worth? Since most private buyers will make offers at or under KBB, you probably won’t get enough to pay off the loan. That’s where dealers like Deery of Ames come in.

Reducing your car payment

Having negative equity, or being “underwater” on your loan can make you feel trapped. But when you bring your vehicle to a dealer, you have a few options.

Normally, when you trade in or sell a vehicle, the dealer would pay off the remaining balance of your loan. Then the remaining amount would go to a down payment, or you could receive the difference in cash. With an underwater car loan, it may work a bit differently.

A popular option for our customers who need to get out from under an expensive car loan, is to roll the remaining balance of their loan into a different vehicle. Say you owe $2,000 more than your vehicle is worth. Your trade will leave those $2,000 to be added to your new car loan.

That may not eliminate your car payment completely, but if you are trading in for a cheaper car, it will reduce it significantly. And that $2,000 will be spread over the term of the loan. If you also get a lower interest rate, it amounts to even more savings.

Visit your local car dealer

And as mentioned above, many dealers are currently paying over Kelley Blue Book Fair Value for used cars, so the numbers you get from the dealer will often be better than what you get from tools online.

If you need to know your options, the professional finance staff at Deery of Ames is happy to help. We want you to have the best information possible, whether you are buying a car here or not.

Stop in, and experience the customer service that has made Deery of Ames the car dealer of choice for so many drivers in Central Iowa when looking for a new vehicle.