Expert advice to help you on your journey this if you choose to go at it alone
If you had to think about what selling your car privately looks like, what pops into your head?
For some South Africans, that Prestik-stained A4 desperately hanging onto the back window of the car is what comes to mind.
Or perhaps, some thoughts immediately jump to our public online marketplaces, where some questionable chassis are displayed amongst second-hand wedding dresses, scratched coffee tables, and pre-loved board games - just to name a few.
But for a lot of people - especially those who haven’t sold this way before - the option of private selling seems marvellous. It appears to be a more efficient, shorter path, with fewer hands and less margin. It often looks like it could pay out more and the thought of ‘remaining in control’ of the entire operation and process is really attractive.
What you think the road ahead looks like:
The decision to sell privately is often a hasty one. After an hour or so of some desktop research or a casual conversation with a friend who came out lucky, we say to ourselves “Ah, this will be a piece of cake” and print out that ‘For Sale’ A4 or press ‘publish’ on our online listing.
But the reality is a lot less pretty and a lot more painful. Right off the bat, the downside is a heavy one.
- Value is subjective. What the car is worth to its owner is not necessarily going to be the same number the interested party has in mind. Both parties are most likely not used car salesmen and so if the seller is uncertain about the real value of the vehicle, how can they really be confident that they’re getting the best deal?
- Conflicting schedules can get in the way of getting the deal done. Matching up available time slots with eager buyers is no easy task and often sellers are left with no-shows, or worse, waiting around for some sketchy-looking person to arrive on their driveway.
- For sure, you won’t have to deal with dealer jargon but you will have to rely on your own negotiating abilities and limited car knowledge. Additionally, there are no Google search results that promise a perfect understanding of the deal in front of you.(You might know a lot about cars but that doesn’t mean you know how to sell them effectively)
- You’re solely responsible for all of the advertising and admin and although you might be able to market too many people online, you’ll be left wading through a bunch of generic “Hi, is this still available?” messages overloading your inbox.
- A lot of people tend to forget that the buyer often has to sell their car first in order to buy the new one… so the process isn’t always so speedy.
Watching all of this unfold and going through this process many times ourselves, we were certain of two things; the first, these pain points were becoming unbearable and the second, we knew we weren’t the only ones experiencing them. We viewed these problems (amongst others) as possibilities and thus CarFling entered the playing field… but that’s a story for another day.
So what are our thoughts on the matter?
It would be naive of us to say that all private selling experiences are bad, that’s just not true. But we’ve been around long enough to know that the vast majority of them aren’t pleasant.
At CarFling, our opinions are not necessarily shaped by the platforms or mechanisms used for private selling but more so by the people involved in the deal-making.
Regardless of the route someone takes to sell their car privately, what is known is that sellers (who are usually non-professionals) will be dealing with non-professional buyers 80% of the time.
That 80% looks like a lot of back and forth, a lot of grey areas, and a lot of time taken to figure out the best road forward.
That other 20% belongs to those instances when you do deal with professional buyers. They know that you don’t really know what you’re doing and take advantage of that. Ultimately forcing you to surrender the final decision-making ability.
It becomes the case of you vs them and your deal table ends up looking like this 👇🏽
Selling or buying a car falls into the bucket of The Thirty Most Important Decisions You Make Throughout Life…Included in this is who you’ll marry, will you choose to have kids, where you’ll live, what job you take up, and so on…
With so much at stake, why would you consider selling your car alone?
You need someone on your side of the table, who has played the game many times and knows how to help you win.
Your deal table should actually look like this 👇🏽
