Carvana vs Private sale

[JeffC]

I'm looking to sell one of our cars. My wife and I both retired last year and we currently have 3 vehicles. Our son was driving one when he first joined the Navy. He took it to Newport for OCS then used it while waiting for a spot to open in the Nuclear Power school in Goose Creek. He has since bought his own vehicle and that left us with 3. The car I want to sell is 2014 Acura MDX. We're debating selling to an online seller like Carvana or listing locally and selling ourselves. I've plugged it onto some online car value sites and came up with a wide range of values, $15000-20000 for a private sale. Thru one of the sites they gave me an offer from Carmax. The first time I plugged it in (yesterday) the offer was just over $15000. I plugged it in this am and the offer was down to $14500. Just curious if anyone has any experience selling to an online seller? Did you find that checking the value more than once resulted in a lower offer on subsequent submissions? I checked the asking price of similar makes and mileage in our area and they range from $19000-23000. My first inclination is to list it myself for 1-2 weeks and see what happens. If I don't find a buyer then go to an online buyer (Carvana, vroom, carmax ...) and take the best offer. Thanks in advance to anyone sharing their car sale experiences.

Jeff

 

[VacayKat]

Just sold 2 of our cars. My best prices were from Vroom online. Carvana wasn’t close. I didn’t actually use them as carmax was close enough on the price for one (les than 500 difference) and I needed a faster sale (registration due within a short time). Vroom from first contact to cash takes ~3 weeks. I sold my other vehicle to a local dealer. It was a 2018 and in perfect shape with low miles so highly desired. I entered info online into KBB and there is an option for dealers to contact you. The dealer I bought the car from originally came in at the lowest - over 4k lower than what I sold it for (basically trade-in value). And yes- when my price expired and I put it back in the price reduced by ~500 for a couple of online sellers.
So I recommend plugging the details into all the online ones, and also taking it to carmax to verify their online price won’t reduce. Carmax, carvana, shift, vroom, kbb. The carmax value will be your best estimate of whether what you are getting online is what they will actually give you. If you have the time and are willing to clean the car up, list it, show it, then you’re probably likely to get your highest price, but in this market fit probably will be less than $1000 from your best price at online/local dealerships. With the one I sold at the dealer the KBB was lower than what I got for it, but I had told them the $$$ I was looking for and they gave me that exact value.

 

[DJensen]

I sold a 2010 Volvo XC90 via Facebook Marketplace this spring. Had numerous inquiries including a dealer of high mileage cars (he tried to low ball my price even on FB). You can quickly weed out low ball offers and find a good buyer. Only challenge of the private party sale was the title transfer. Here in MN the DMVs are still appointment only, whereas before COVID you'd go with the person, sign it over, they pay the fees and you knew it was complete. Overall, I did much better than trade-in or Carmax quote.

 

[wackymother]

Another place to try is peddle.com. My sister sold a car to them a few years ago and said it was very easy.

 

[harveyhaddixfan]

I sold to Vroom. Their offer was higher than everyone else. I got more than if I was trading in and none of the hassle of selling myself. I would typically do a trade in, but I was flying from Ohio to Arizona to pick up the new car.

 

[Bucky]

Your best price will obviously come from selling it yourself. But, Vroom and Carvana are both good alternative if that doesn’t work out. I’ve checked out both of them on numerous occasions. I actually ended up buying a BMW from vroom. I had no luck selling any vehicle to either one of them though. Both of their offers will go up and down depending on used car auction prices. I’ve seen increases in value from both of them and decreases also. If you are using their online offer links be very careful putting in the vehicles equipment. i found the way to get the best price was to use an online VIN decoder or the window sticker to make sure I missed no options. I believe both of their pricing is for like 7 days. Vroom is very picky on their paperwork. I actually had a deal fall apart because they wouldn’t accept my title because it had a hole in it from when it was opened up. Wanted me to get a new title even though the hole was in a non used portion of the title! DMV laughed and said they didn’t need to reissue a title because of this. After I receive offers from both I would give someplace like cars.com or cargurus.com a couple of weeks and see what happened. In the current market the current value surely wouldn’t drop much, if correct options are entered.

 

[joestein]

In the past, I have found Carmax to be excellent, but I haven't used it in many years.

 

[nightnurse613]

Just recently sold my son's BMW to a private party. We met at his Credit Union. They handled all the paperwork. One thing I will say, the Arizona MVD has put a lot of related items (registration renewal, title transfer, etc) online. It's not easy but doable. We also have a lot of 3rd party locations that are authorized to perform many of the MVD transactions.

 

[JeffC]

Thank You to everyone for your replies. So I went the private sale route. I placed ads on Craig's List and FB marketplace. I got multiple responses on CL, only one on FB. As far as I can tell most of the replies are from small private lot buyers. I did check the value on the various web sites. They ranged from low (7900) from Peddle to high (17000) from Vroom. I have on offer of 16500 from one of the local buyers. She's supposed to come by and inspect the vehicle tomorrow, as long as she honors the price she gave me I'll sell. I also checked with the dealership we originally bought from, they offered 14300. I read through the reviews for Vroom, Carvana and Carmax and some of the issues made me think I'm better off taking a little less to sell locally. I was surprised that there were no individual private buyers that contacted me. Thanks again.

Jeff