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How Used Car Prices Have Changed.
by Terry
It's not long until I become a father for the first time, and so I've been forced to get rid of my rather family unfriendly two seater and look for a more 'family friendly' car. One thing I'm finding throughout this process is that car values have been put through the ringer in the past few years, and buying a used car is no longer a case of settling for one that will do the job, but used car buyers really have a whole new set of rules to play by. The internet has opened up whole markets that I would never have had access to before, and as a result used car prices have become much lower.
Used car pricing is something I became quite familiar with when I bought my current car. I found that while new car pricing was pretty consistent from one yard to the next, you find used car prices vary dramatically between one yard and the next. I guess the car dealer just makes up a price he figures he can sell the car for and puts it on the window. You probably spend hours driving from one yard to the next and looking for that one car that screams out to you to buy it. Now, leaving aside new car prices for a moment, I want to tell you how useful you will find the internet when trying to find your car.
As I mentioned, used car prices are pretty much made up by the dealer, so how useful was it for me to be able to search online and find a car buyers guide that had many great tricks and tips for those looking to buy used car, truck or motor cycles online including a used car price guide. You can actually find the blue book value of a vehicle by it's make, model and year, then compare that to the asking prices of the dealers(online or offline). It's important to realize that blue book value is just a guide, and you need to know the car history as well before you can see whether the new car prices you are looking at are going to rip you off or give you a bargain. Luckily you can get a lot of car history online through certain sites too.
There was one car I was looking at that I was able to thoroughly check out online before making a decision to buy. The car values had stayed quite steady for this particular model, so I was able to check out my car buyers guide and see that this was indeed a model that aged well, and needed very little maintenance. Not only was there good information available for that model, but I could also check out the individual car history for that particular car. I found that the original driver had driven it a lot, but the last two drivers had taken good care of it. I was even able to check and find how regularly the car had been serviced under the last owner. For me that was a bonus, and I was quite lucky to be able to do that as this information won't be available for most vehicles.
All in all I could see that the price of this car was well below what it's market value should be. I was able to get a local mechanic to check it out for a small fee, and then got it shipped down to me. I've been driving it around quite happily for the past two weeks and it is an absolute pleasure to drive(probably less so once I have small people screaming in the back seat). I can only guess that the previous owner put it on an auction sire and saw the used car prices were quite low there, so he put a low reserve and buy now on this one. Had he done the research I had he would have known he could have got more for it. But most people just want to sell their used car, and while used car buyers do a lot of research, used car sellers usually don't. The net result is that used car prices have fallen dramatically now more people are buying and selling online, and that there are many more bargains to be had. In this case...my gain.
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