Good morning,
The quote from Toyota is $2800 and it looks like the trade in value average from KBB is $2100. Private party value from KBB is $4230.
Have had it paid free and clear for years, but it does need a new muffler soon.
Your thoughts?
Thoughts about what ? If you have a question just ask it .
The real question is for you. Do you want to go through selling it yourself? The difference is $1430 more than what the dealer is offering. Not to mention the dealer is offering $700 more than the KBB estimate.
What condition did you use? Don’t be optimistic when assessing the value of your Prius. This helps you determine whether the $2800 offer is a good one or not. It seems good compared to your kbb trade-in average, but I’m thinking more about the private sale average. You have to be willing to wait for a buyer to give you the $4230, less the cost of the muffler and anything else it needs, like tires, for instance.
Car buyers aren’t always who they tell you they are, either. It just might be someone that wants to steal your car or rob you. Definitely do not meet them at your home. My local police dept has several parking places at the station for car sales. You make an appointment to meet the prospective buyer at the police station and decide if you are willing to ride along with them when they test drive your car. If this scares you too much, then take the $2800 from the dealer. This bad situation won’t occur anywhere close to half the time, but it happens often enough that you should be aware of it.
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See what similar cars are listed for in your area. Be honest for miles and condition. You have to fix the muffler. Then assume you have to give a discount, otherwise people will buy other cars. See if it worth the hassle to sell it yourself. Also, bear in mind, when you go to fix your muffler, some other issue might pop up.
I have sold plenty of cars myself, never traded them in, but there is the hassle factor. I always have a mental note of the amount of time I spend on the process. I can always pick up an extra shift or two to make up the difference. So I sell it myself if the difference is more than that.
How many miles? Older hybrids with lots of miles can be a difficult sell.
Most 2006-2008 on Ebay motors that sold were in the $1500-$2500 range.
The Toyota dealership’s $2800 offer seems pretty fair to me, given it has repairs needed. If you wanted to see what it would bring on the open market you could try to sell it on Craiglist first, give it a couple weeks to sell. If no offers there better than the dealership, sell it to the dealership. You’ll get better results in the open market if you can tell the potential buyer there’s no repairs needed. So you’d likely come out $$'s ahead by fixing the muffler problem before posting it on Craigslist. Potential buyers are gonna be thinking if there’s a muffler problem there may be a cat problem too.
You really don’t know what the dealership is giving you for it unless you and the dealer have previously arrived at a clean deal price without a trade in.
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Great point. Trade in values don’t mean anything without a firm price on the new car first.
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