MAGNATIZE: The Easy Way to Sell Your Car or Truck | Blog

Share your selling tips and experiences

admin — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:06:02 +0000

This blog offers a place to share your selling experiences and tips with others. You might have personal insights into the financial transaction, prepping the car, documents, mechanical inspections, repairs, scams, curious state regulations or just plain funny stories.

Use the comment link below to share your thoughts about do-it-yourself vehicle selling.

Another Way to Appraise Your Car

admin — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:22:49 +0000

The Web offers abundant tools to get a fair appraisal of your vehicle’s value – Kelly Blue Book is an authoritative source, as is the Nada Guide. You can also review online classifieds such as AutoTrader to see what actual cars (dealer and private party) are selling for in your area.

The official guides, while informative, are ultimately speculative. Just like your house which you think is worth X, turns out to have a very different value when it becomes necessary to make a sale happen ASAP.

One way to get a “cash-on-the-barrelhead” price for your car is to visit your local CarMax dealer. They are unlikely to offer you as much as you’d get from a private buyer, but they’ll give you a no-nonsense appraisal that you can use as the absolute minimum you should ask from a private buyer. The good thing is that you will now have a “back stop” against low-ball offers.

Car Max will buy a car that they’ve appraised at their appraised price for up to seven days from the date of the appraisal, so you could even sell it to them if you can’t find a private buyer willing to make a better offer. Car Max is also great for window-shopping lots of makes and models for your next car.

At the end of the day, price is all about timing. If you need to unload your car tomorrow, the price will be significantly lower than if you have the luxury of time to show your car to the world with your MAGNATIZE signs.

Meeting at the Bank when Big Cash is Involved

admin — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:22:23 +0000

If you’ve read the MAGNATIZE Step-by-Step Guide, you now know that the official recommendation is to sell your vehicle for a transfer of hard cash whenever possible. This recommendation works fine when you’re selling an older car for $2500. The buyer hands over 25 one-hundred dollar bills and you shake hands.

But how do you handle cash for a more expensive car worth $10,000 or more? Walking around with that kind of money is potentially unsafe for both buyer and seller.

The obvious solution is to get a cashier’s check from the buyer’s bank. But, the internet abounds with stories about real-looking cashier’s checks that turn out to be fake. What’s more, suppose you deposit the check, the money appears in your bank balance, and you go out and buy something big — like another car – and then it turns out that the check is no good. Innocent victims who unknowingly accept counterfeit cashier’s checks are liable. If you cash or deposit forged checks, you will have to pay your bank back once the bank discovers the check is phony.

The best bet is to accompany the buyer to his bank where the cashier’s check can be produced on the spot by the teller in your name for the exact amount of the Bill of Sale. You’ll feel a lot more comfortable conducting business at the bank.

After you have an agreement, arrange to meet at the bank with your Bill of Sale, receive the check there, sign the title and hand off the keys. You’ll need a friend to drive you home — or better yet, have your friend drive you to your bank in order to deposit the check.