I am currently in process of trying to find my daughter a car in the $3-5K range. Looking at used Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas mostly. No rebuilt/salvage vehicles. I am using Craigslist, but looking only for private party owners (no dealers).
What I’m finding is that +90% of the cars that are for sale that say “private owner” are actually small used car lots or single-party car flippers. They are buying cars at auctions and re-selling them.
I have traditionally avoided these types of sellers primarily due to the way they source their vehicles…at auctions and thus it is harder to tell what the real history is on the car. And use car guys come off as kind of untrustworthy.
Does anyone purchase from these types of resellers and have you had any issues. Anyone have experience in these kind of cars on what typically makes them end up in auction. Any bad experiences or pitfalls to avoid?
My sense is that these are previously wrecked cars and old fleet type/lease vehicles. I can always check the CarFax on the car I guess.
My problem is that most of the cars available are from these car flippers. Seem to be very few choices from actual user/owners selling their cars. So I am wondering if I should expand my consideration to this set of cars…
I think (based on what I was told when trading my old car in last fall) that at least a decent portion of the cars that go to auction are care that were traded in but then too old to sell on the dealer’s lot.
i.e.- nothing wrong with them per se, but they’ve been marked up a lot.
A good friend of mine had a small car lot about ten years ago and I would help her repo the cars when needed. She would get the best quality car she could since she wanted to sell it quick. So it was usually Toyota, Honda’s, or trucks. So I’m thinking it really depends on the person. Her father was a mechanic and would look the cars over for her and she would allow people to take it their own, once she got all their information, and a deposit.
Actually the best cars on her lot were the lower priced ones 3k and under, since she made sure those were in great condition and would self finance those.
When in doubt, ask if you can take the care for a PPI with an third party shop (of your choosing). Otherwise, ask for a Carfax or AutoCheck. Your insurance agent can also run the vin to see if there were any accidents or other things that show up on title (like lemon info…if a car had one and such).
I think it’s a good idea to not buy from a small car lot or flipper that advertises a private owner.
I think a lot of the flippers buy trade-ins that aren’t at the quality that can be resold by the dealer. For example, CarMax buys lots of used vehicles bt only resells a fraction at their lots. The remaining are auctioned to third parties, mostly these flippers.
And while you can always have a car checked out by mechanic, the problem we found is that the more times ownership is transferred without the car being registered, the more likely an error was made along the way, and the more difficult it is to register the car. y daughter purchased a car from one of these flippers, who had purchased it from CarMax. When CarMax purchased from the original owner, they screwed up the paperwork. The original owner had registered the car under her maiden name, but signed it over to CarMax using her married name. CarMax didn’t catch this (in fairness we didn’t catch it either.), and when we contacted them about it, absolutely refused to do anything about it. So we had to attempt to contact the original owner and have he fill out an affidavit that the names were the same person. When she never responded, we had to get a bond as part of the registration process. Big pain in the ass.
Can I piggy back your question? When checking out a used car - and the Carfax/Autochecker says accident - how do you know it was fixed right? Or is an accident a giant red flag to be avoided at all costs??
I’ve had a couple guys respond that they got the cars from CarMax at auction. So seems pretty common. My assumption is that in the price range i’m looking at (sub $5K) is that CarMax does not want to fool with these lower value/older cars.
CarMax is fine if you want to pay their premium. Like other dealers, they are usually well above the cost you can get from a private owner.
Most of the small used car guys actually have relatively comparable prices to private party cost. I guess they buy them and flip to make a quick few hundred $$.
I think I’m going to start considering these cars I guess, because I need to go ahead and find a car, and these guys have a lot of civic/corollas that seem to be in decent shape (visually). Still not sure though, I just have a (un)natural aversion to used car salesmen.
Cars can go to auction for lots of reasons, but as someone previously stated, they can just be trade ins the dealer didn’t want. I was attempting to trade my previous truck for one like my current, I needed to sell my truck to be able to afford the new one so trade in made sense. A few of the dealers I talked to didn’t want my truck because it was too nice, they said it didn’t fit the rest of the inventory on their lot so they didn’t really want it. They told me vehicles like that, or older low value trade ins end up at the auction so they can keep their inventory to the price range and value they want.
All that said, I wouldn’t buy a car from a car flipper unless it was a really good deal and I had the car inspected. I have had very good luck buying cars from private parties, in fact I have never bought a car from a dealer, always searched and found a clean PP vehicle. Yes some PP will lie to you just as much as a dealer will, but at least you get the chance to vet the seller a bit. I treat buying used cars from a PP more like an interview of the person than checking out the car. If I think they are upstanding people and trustworthy I am likely to buy the car after checking it out, if I find them a bit suspicious I can easily walk. With dealers, they are going to blow smoke up ur ass no matter what.
I’d keep looking PP, the search can take a while, but IME it works out in the end.
This is a hard question to answer. It depends on the issue. If the car has flood damage, pretty much stay away from it. Many times Carfax will state the type of accident, so you may be able to focus on the front, side or rear of the car to assess things like fitment of the body, door fit, hood lines and things like that. If you test drive, accelerating and braking without steering input, like hands off the wheel, will help to show potential alignment issues. Any excessive pulling left or right could indicate frame issues that cant be corrected. All the gaps of the doors, hood, trunk, lights, bumpers and the like should be uniform in width. Paint should have the same tint/color and be shiny all over. Inferior paint will fade and oxidize rapidly.
Bought one from this type of lot. Back in 2009, a 1995 Toyota Tacoma. We needed an old, reliable truck. Checked carfax and the record was clean. We got a great price, we owned it until last year when I sold it for what I paid for it. Like anything else, do your homework.
Yes, another thread on car buying…
I am currently in process of trying to find my daughter a car in the $3-5K range. Looking at used Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas mostly. No rebuilt/salvage vehicles. I am using Craigslist, but looking only for private party owners (no dealers).
What I’m finding is that +90% of the cars that are for sale that say “private owner” are actually small used car lots or single-party car flippers. They are buying cars at auctions and re-selling them.
I have traditionally avoided these types of sellers primarily due to the way they source their vehicles…at auctions and thus it is harder to tell what the real history is on the car. And use car guys come off as kind of untrustworthy.
Does anyone purchase from these types of resellers and have you had any issues. Anyone have experience in these kind of cars on what typically makes them end up in auction. Any bad experiences or pitfalls to avoid?
My sense is that these are previously wrecked cars and old fleet type/lease vehicles. I can always check the CarFax on the car I guess.
My problem is that most of the cars available are from these car flippers. Seem to be very few choices from actual user/owners selling their cars. So I am wondering if I should expand my consideration to this set of cars…
Carfax will usually give some indication of the type of accident - minor or moderate, etc. And they give some descriptions as to what was damaged sometimes as well as whether the airbags deployed. So if someone claims minor accident but the airbags deployed, that’s probably a red flag. That’s why it’s sometimes better to buy private party since the owner can sometimes give you the history and provide proof. A few years back, I bought a used car that showed minor accident. Owner explained that a tow truck driver messed up and backed into the car and scraped it. He had pictures, it was very minor. If you go to a used car lot, they’ll of course have no idea of what happened.
As someone else said, avoid flood cars and I’d avoid cars if they show theft. If any electrical gets damaged, it may cause problems down the road that are hard to detect and you never know how the car was fixed. Test drive is probably most important.
Can I piggy back your question? When checking out a used car - and the Carfax/Autochecker says accident - how do you know it was fixed right? Or is an accident a giant red flag to be avoided at all costs??
It seems most sellers are dealers. The car game has changed in more recent years. It is HARD to sell a car private party it seems. I always bought cars and sold my old car as a private seller. The last few cars I attempted to sell… Nobody called to buy it! In fact, when they did sell, dealers bought them. The silly part is the dealers would pretend to be private party buyers and then after we made a deal, they continued to pretend to be private party sellers, claiming they work at the dealership and the dealership was going to advance them money for their own car. Dumb. As if I care- just give me the money! Why the make believe story!
The last car I sold, I sold on Craigslist. It took a while from dodging the calls from the dreamers and eventually the right guy bought the car. I also bought a car on Craigslist, private party.
As far as damage and repairs, I’ve changed my mind about that. An older, cheaper car, as long as it’s mechanically solid and any repairs were fixed properly… I don’t mind. My current vehicle was painted, maybe in an accident, but it wasn’t on car fax. I know what to look for and I showed the dealer the repaired areas. I told him I would buy the car anyway if the price is right. They were asking $12,000 which was fair and I told them $9000. They took 5 minutes to say ok. The car has been great. I went through the vehicle and changed all fluids and put on new brake pads, rotors, and tires. I like working on cars, so it’s not a big deal. Spent the weekend doing it and the car runs great.