Should You Sell Your Old Car, or Trade It In?

If you are thinking about getting rid of your old car and buying a new or used vehicle, the first question you may ask yourself is whether to trade in your old car, or sell it yourself.  Selling the car to a private owner will, without a doubt, get you more money for your old car and there are many online sources where you can list your old car and get a lot of traffic to view your ad. If you are selling one of the top ranked used vehicles like a Toyota or a Honda, you should be able to generate a lot of interest from posting your ad on Craig’s list- for tips on how to write your ad, see previous post entitled;   “ Tips on Selling Your Old Car.”  You can find the value of your car on the Kelly Blue Book (KBB) website.

If your old car is not fully paid off however, it will be difficult to sell it yourself as the lending organization owns the title until your loan is paid in full.  In this situation, it may be better to go ahead and trade your car into the dealership as a down payment toward your new car.  One advantage to trading your old car in is the tax advantage, for example if your old car is worth $10,000 and you trade it in a your new car that has a sticker price of $30,000 then you will only be paying new car sales tax on $20,000.

The biggest advantage to selling your car yourself is obviously that you will most likely be able to collect more money (the retail value) of the car and if you were to trade it, the offer from the dealership would be less.  If your car requires a lot of maintenance or repairs before you list it, you may end up making the same amount as you would have on a trade in anyhow.  In that case, a lot of time and hassle would be saved to simple drive your old car to one of our used car or used truck dealers at St. Louis Auto Shop and trade it in.