The used-car market is booming right now, particularly if you're looking to sell. With selling and buying prices at a high, you'll get more for your old vehicle, but you'll pay more for the new one too—about 32.7 percent more—compared to what it was last year around this time. Fortunately, selling a car has never been easier than it is right now, whether you choose the old-school option to trade-in at the dealer, one of myriad online options, or something in between like a CarMax, there's a method out there to suit just about everyone.
The last couple years we've seen great deal of change, and that much is true within the automotive sphere as well. Buyers no longer want to sit in a stuffy showroom for hours on end only to be told that their trade is somehow worth $2000 less than they were hoping for or get pressured into buying something different by a salesperson that thinks they know better than them. In fact, it's not like private party sales are a cakewalk either. When selling private party, you are the salesperson, so while you might get every penny you're asking for and have the ability to negotiate price, the cost there is having to do all of the footwork yourself. Instead, buyers can now sit in the comfort of their home browsing expansive lists of vehicles that can literally be delivered to their front door. That's in addition to not having to worry about the uncomfortable situation of haggling for the price you want—on most sites the price you see is the no-haggle final price.
Five years ago, it would be quite uncommon for someone to buy or sell a car online, unless it was a private sale on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, but in the last couple years we've seen the popularity of companies like Carvana and Vroom explode due to the ease of use, convenience, and hyper-competitive pricing. Dealers beware: buyers are going to compare trade-in prices with numerous offers they receive from these online companies, so it may be time to step it up a bit in terms of valuation.
To get a read of the market on our own, we used a staffer's 2019 Subaru Impreza hatchback as our bogey car and plugged in all its info to our various websites and sources. The car is a base model, with Subaru's EyeSight driver-assist system and some all-weather floor mats as its only optional equipment, and it sold for just under $22,000 when bought new in August 2018. We settled on using a traditional dealer trade-in quote from a local dealership, a quote from CarMax, quotes from a mixture of different websites, including: Carvana, Vroom, Truecar, and Kelley Blue Book. Just for giggles, we threw in the MySubaru guaranteed trade-in program (GTP) offered on the MySubaru website.
The range of prices had some significant variance, but we did find that dealership-based quotes were on the lower side. As a benchmark, we used the mean private-party value of $19,498 to see how it compares to our plethora of quotes. The process for getting your quote on any of the online services was simple: enter the VIN or license plate number of your vehicle, select any additional options your vehicle might have, upload a few cell phone pictures—not required, but recommended—and within seconds you'll have yourself a locked-in offer that's good for seven days.
After gathering the data, it's clear that people are getting more cash from these online services than they are from dealerships and in many cases with far less effort and hard feelings. In most cases, the incentive to stay home and take the easy route seems to be the way to go. If you're up for the extra effort there's no denying that private party can net you slightly more cash, but you'll have to put in a bit of time yourself to sift through all the offers, talk to potential buyers, and eventually meet with people to show them the car, so for many, trading a slightly lower valuation is less hassle than that. If anything is certain, it's that dealers have lost their bargaining advantage; with used cars at a premium and so many ways to buy and sell it's clear that cash is king. If it were us, we'd go with the highest bidder.
Max Mortimer is a lifelong car enthusiast who spends his days managing Car and Driver's test data and processes, and evaluating vehicles. Starting at the age of five, he began working on classic muscle from the '60s with his father, which blossomed into his own passion for modifying cars, which include a 500 whp Big Turbo SRT-4 Neon and a FBO Protuned '17 WRX. Not a day goes by that Max doesn't think about owning his dream car, a fifth-gen Viper GTS . . . one day.
