6 Things to Remember When Negotiating for a Car
Tip 2: Determine the ‘True’ Value of the Vehicle
Once you’ve settled on a particular vehicle, you need to determine what it’s really worth. This may or may not bear resemblance to its listed price!
There are websites out there that will give you an estimate of the market value of used vehicles. The most popular of these is the Kelly Blue Book. If you’re in Canada, you can try the Canadian Black Book pricing guide. However, used cars are all unique, so this is not an exact science. It’s a decent starting point, but you need to do a bit more digging.
Fortunately, you’re likely already familiar with AutoTempest.com. Using the AutoTempest car search engine, you can cast a wide enough net to find very similar vehicles to compare to the one you’re hoping to buy.
If you can find prices that compare favorably, go ahead and print off the listings; you can use them as negotiating tools later on. Of course, pay attention to things like mileage, condition, and options installed. It’s possible for two vehicles with the same make, model, and year to be worth very different amounts. Location matters too, but there are plenty of car transportation options out there, so don’t worry about it too much - especially for negotiation purposes.
Of course, the prices you will find while doing this shopping around are all listing prices. Presumably they are all somewhat inflated, since the sellers expect people to negotiate - although not as well as you will!
With eBay Motors, you can see what people have actually paid for similar used cars recently - a very powerful negotiating tool. For this reason, we have integrated the information from eBay Motors on the AutoTempest homepage - once you choose the car you're looking for from the drop downs, you’ll notice some information about that vehicle appears at the bottom-left. One of those links is “Actual prices paid on eBay”, where you get the link to that feature.
You can also check out our full list of car buying guides and tools.