Best trade values for a used 997.
07-09-2016 | 04:03 PM
#61
Rennlist Member
Joined: Jun 2015
Posts: 1,949
Likes: 134
From: SLC, Utah
What I have found regarding these cars, and really any sports car, is only 25% of private sellers are actually ready to sell the car. The other 75% have a high to ridiculous price that they would LOVE to get. There is a 09 C4S on autotrader for $70k right now haha.
Private sellers, unlike dealers, don't know what the cars are selling for (ebay sold listings is the only option) and only know what they paid 2-5 years ago. A dealer knows what they are selling for and what they paid for it a month ago, and how much it's costing them to sit on the lot.
Private sellers, unlike dealers, don't know what the cars are selling for (ebay sold listings is the only option) and only know what they paid 2-5 years ago. A dealer knows what they are selling for and what they paid for it a month ago, and how much it's costing them to sit on the lot.
Part of the problem is with a low volume market, you have to list it for a long time to find a buyer. So, like probably many others, I listed mine early. I'm not quite ready to sell it, but I would let it go for the listed price. I'll drop the price by ~$3-5k when I start getting serious as that's about what I think the car is worth in the current market. I ordered a new 991, and if the new car is close to delivery and the GTS still hasn't sold, I'll have the dealer evaluate it as a trade and split the difference to re-price it aggressively. (And if even that doesn't work, the dealer trade offer is more than fair and I'll happily take it!)
07-18-2016 | 11:21 AM
#62
Thread Starter
Pro
Joined: Aug 2015
Posts: 705
Likes: 16
To the extent that anyone is still interested in this topic, I think I had the most revelatory exchange with a dealer as to what the issue is. The bottom line is dealerships simply do not want a car like mine. The two causes of this are 1.) I am the fourth owner, and the first two owners did not do a very good job of documenting their service history, and 2.) I have over 50,000 miles on my car (55,600 now). The fact that I have been hyper-vigilant about my service and care of the car, and have all of the records and clean DME report to prove it don't really matter, at least not yet. My car is viewed as too much of a risk both to the dealerships, and to any potential buyer, because people are just simply going to be worried that my car is not reliable.
The way this was illustrated to me is the fact that I was actually looking at a virtually identical car to mine for sale at another dealership. The big differences were that it is one year newer, had 15,000 less miles, and had one previous owner. It actually had about a $4000 lower MSRP and less options than my car has. We all agree that car is worth more than my car if for no other reason than the one year newer and lower mileage. But talking to the dealership sales manager about how he was pricing his car and about what he could offer me for mine was very telling. The book says there's about a $3500 difference between the two, even with the mileage, but he did not believe he could sell my car for $3500 less than he could sell his. To show it wasn't just salesman/dealership bluster, he actually offered me an exceedingly fair price if I just wanted to buy his car and forget about a trade. The fact is, he did not want my car to sell unless I was willing to give it to him for under both KBB trade and "real" market value.
This has led me to one unfortunate conclusion: I could have done a much better job negotiating when I purchased my car in the first place. I am confident in my abilities to negotiate with a dealership and get a fair price for a car I plan to purchase, but my current car is more of an anchor than an asset when it comes to attempting a trade. I rather naïvely thought that they would make a little money on me from the sale of their car, then a little more money on me from buying my car low and selling it higher, both things which I was prepared to accept. I also felt that because my car is less expensive, they would have an easier time selling my car than they would a more expensive car that they were attempting to sell. I viewed it sort of like the housing market, where more modest homes are easier to sell than larger ones simply because there are more buyers in the market for modest homes. Apparently I was wrong about that as well. That 997 TT I was looking at almost a month ago is still for sale, but yet the dealership has still shown zero interest in trying to make a deal with me knowing that I'm looking at trading in my car.
So now, it appears the best case scenario for me is to spend a couple more years developing impeccable service records with my car and keeping it in pristine condition, enjoying it along the way of course, so that I can slow down a bit of the depreciation curve and ameliorate the fears that many potential buyers will have about buying a four owner, higher mileage car. Of course my car will have depreciated during that time, but I will take less of a hit then then I will now.
A learning experience indeed!
The way this was illustrated to me is the fact that I was actually looking at a virtually identical car to mine for sale at another dealership. The big differences were that it is one year newer, had 15,000 less miles, and had one previous owner. It actually had about a $4000 lower MSRP and less options than my car has. We all agree that car is worth more than my car if for no other reason than the one year newer and lower mileage. But talking to the dealership sales manager about how he was pricing his car and about what he could offer me for mine was very telling. The book says there's about a $3500 difference between the two, even with the mileage, but he did not believe he could sell my car for $3500 less than he could sell his. To show it wasn't just salesman/dealership bluster, he actually offered me an exceedingly fair price if I just wanted to buy his car and forget about a trade. The fact is, he did not want my car to sell unless I was willing to give it to him for under both KBB trade and "real" market value.
This has led me to one unfortunate conclusion: I could have done a much better job negotiating when I purchased my car in the first place. I am confident in my abilities to negotiate with a dealership and get a fair price for a car I plan to purchase, but my current car is more of an anchor than an asset when it comes to attempting a trade. I rather naïvely thought that they would make a little money on me from the sale of their car, then a little more money on me from buying my car low and selling it higher, both things which I was prepared to accept. I also felt that because my car is less expensive, they would have an easier time selling my car than they would a more expensive car that they were attempting to sell. I viewed it sort of like the housing market, where more modest homes are easier to sell than larger ones simply because there are more buyers in the market for modest homes. Apparently I was wrong about that as well. That 997 TT I was looking at almost a month ago is still for sale, but yet the dealership has still shown zero interest in trying to make a deal with me knowing that I'm looking at trading in my car.
So now, it appears the best case scenario for me is to spend a couple more years developing impeccable service records with my car and keeping it in pristine condition, enjoying it along the way of course, so that I can slow down a bit of the depreciation curve and ameliorate the fears that many potential buyers will have about buying a four owner, higher mileage car. Of course my car will have depreciated during that time, but I will take less of a hit then then I will now.
A learning experience indeed!