Sounds like there’s state variations.
Probably 50 of them.
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We bought a new mini-van in December. The trade in was going to be like $500 on our old one. We donated the old one to Rawhide Boys Ranch and they were able to sell it at auction for almost $2,000. So depending on how old and how much it is worth, I’d recommend donating it to a charity that will be able to use the funds rather then selling it.
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To offer a counter-example, my mom donated my stepdad’s car when he died and they auctioned it off for like 35% of the Kelly Blue Book Value.
For only slightly more effort on her part she could have taken it to one of those sleazy used car dealers and probably gotten at least 50-60% of KBB and donated the money to charity. 
I haven’t needed that, either. I’ve mostly given dead cars to the dealer, but i sold a really old civic to a friend. He handed me cash, i signed the title and handed it to him, all in our driveway. He had no trouble registering that car, and drove it for months.
It was REALLY hard to remove the plates. The screws holding them had rusted and wouldn’t turn. That was the only issue we had.
How did this turn out?
Very well, thank you.
Need the deets. How many offers did you get, who did you sell it to, and how much more did you sell it for than you’d have gotten a year and a half ago?
And was a notary required? LOL
Definitely did need a notary when I told my car to my sister, for the title transfer. Ohio.
Alternatively, I think we could have both gone to the title office to do the transfer, but I was not up for that.
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It was a 2010 Lexus RX 350 4dr SUV AWD (3.5L 6cyl 6A) with expired registration & 229,000 miles.
I got three quotes:
AutoNation $7,000; drive it in to them
Carvana $5,909; they pick it up
Edmunds/CarMax $5,800; drive it in to them
I scheduled an appointment with the AutoNation representative, sent him some pic’s, & started driving to their location. As I was driving in, he texted me that, based on the photos, he would only give me 5k for it. So, I texted him back that he could stick his revised offer up his tailpipe. Wife was out of the country at that time, and, since I have no friends, the Lyft/Uber ride back to my house would’ve taken another $50-100 off of my revenue.
So, I contacted Carvana. They had someone come to my house, review the car, provided me with paper work to sign, gave me a check for the quoted amount, drove the car onto the street, and had someone else (with a tow truck) come and pick it up the next day. Easy peasy and they didn’t hassle me about anything.
I was quite happy with the Carvana experience and would recommend them to someone who is looking for a recommendation on where to sell their 2010 Lexus RX 350 4dr SUV AWD (3.5L 6cyl 6A) with expired registration & 229,000 miles.
I have no idea. I wasn’t exactly following the used car market prior to nor subsequent to this transaction
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I’m waiting for my new civic to hopefully arrive this month and was wondering if I should go with CarMax or sell privately.
Annoyingly if I were to trade it in with the Honda dealer, I would only pay 5% tax on the difference between in price rather than 5% on the new car price. But if I sell it to CarMax I don’t get this benefit. I assume this gives the dealership even less reason to be competitive.
With 43k miles, Kelley blue book says 18,800 is the average and CarMax brought up the same KBB and offers me the max of the range, 19,600. Fine by me, that’s approximately what I paid for it 4.5 years ago
If only there were some way to determine how much 5% of the selling price would be. Also, dealer probably won’t give you 19,600…probably closer to 18,800…so factor that in as well
If CarMax offers 19,600, I will lose 5% of that to taxes, so the net is $18,620 which is what the dealer would have to offer to make me indifferent from a financial point of view. I would probably default to the dealer within a few hundred dollars because I think they will take care of all the transitioning. If I sell at CarMax and want to keep my AK2ARY license plate I think it’s a bit more work on my end.
Also, I’ve never heard of needing a title transfer notarized in MN or IA.
The value of convenience is often under-valued.
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As I mentioned in previous post, my last auto sale was separate from purchase and to CarMax in 2011/2012 timeframe. I don’t remember any extra work for me at CarMax. There was still the extra taxation for two transactions compared to one net price. In my state, you keep the tag from the old vehicle. I have never had a personalized tag, so not sure what it takes here to swap the tag to a new vehicle, and that most likely varies from state to state.
That would be high in my, albeit limited, experience. If someone else is offering $19,600, dealer will probably offer $15,000ish. Which only saves you $750 in sales tax, leaving you roughly $3,850 worse off. Though with a little less hassle.
At least that’s been my experience. I’ve only done this twice though. But I’ve been told by several folks to assume that the dealer will offer 75% of what you’ll be able to sell it to a private party for.
I’m not exactly sure how that is affected by Covid. My understanding is that both numbers are up, so I’m guessing the 75% ratio is still valid, but not certain. I bought my new car early in the pandemic when the pandemic pricing hadn’t really started.
Holy cats… just valued it on Kelly Blue Book’s site. Trade-In Value is almost exactly what I paid for it (slightly higher). Private Party value is considerably higher. I’m not used to cars appreciating! The thing is almost 2 years old and has over 20,000 miles on it.
Not a 75% difference in values though. Maybe that was for lower value vehicles, like the one I was selling before I bought this one. 
Some of this is state specific.
The SOBs that run Illinois have recently capped the sales tax benefit of automobile trade ins at the maximum of a 10,000 trade in. So if you buy a 42,000 car and trade in an 18,000 car, you pay sales tax on 32k (42k-10k) not on 24k (42k-18k). And the sales is likely to be 8% not 5%.
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