If you want to figure out what your car’s worth, then you have to realise a few things about vehicles. Firstly they depreciate over time. Although they are considered assets, they are not assets that are considered investments because of their quick depreciation rates. This can therefore cause confusion when you are trying to establish what you car is worth. Well here are a few tricks of the trade to help you get the best price on your used car when trying to trade it in.
Visit a number of dealerships
Firstly, you should take your car to a number of dealerships in order to establish what they would give you for your car. Although this can be time consuming, this way you will be able to establish an estimated value of your vehicle. It is generally best to take your car back to the dealership at which you bought it if you can first. This way they will have your entire service history and be able to make an estimation based on the facts of the car. From there you can take it to second hand dealers and see what they have to say. In addition to this, you can also see what cars like yours are going for. It is important to check out their mileage and if they come with a full service history as this is very important to potential buyers.
Get a motor mechanic and auto electrician to evaluate the vehicle
By taking your car to an auto mechanic or an auto electrician that you trust, they will be able to help you evaluate what you could sell or trade your car in for. This is because of their years of experience in the market. In addition to this, they will be able to help you assess the longevity of the vehicle and can advise you if selling the car is a good idea or not.
Look online
You have to love the Internet, you can now do almost anything online. There are a number of websites that you can look at which have forms which you can complete to provide you with their valuation of your vehicle. However, do not only use these websites or you may find yourself being very disappointed with the responses you get. One of the websites that you can visit is www.ralsa.co.za which is endorsed by Trans-Union. What is great about this evaluation website is that they have a team of experts who base the valuation price on the month in which you request it. This means that they provide the most up to date valuations.
Selling your car can be a pain as you always want more than what the people say that you can get for your car. But sometime you just have to trust that they are not talking rubbish and that their valuation of their car is accurate. Should you not trust the valuation, then you can follow all of the steps above by this can be very time consuming! Do not get me wrong, I am not saying trust the first valuation that you receive, I promote getting more than one valuation. All I am saying is that dealerships have been around for years and they have expertise in this area so unless they are the creepiest dealer then you should respect the fact that they may know exactly what they are talking about. Let them do some of the leg work for you, that is what they are there for. Let them figure out what your car’s worth.