As someone who opted to maximize income from private sale of his 2017 Long range S, vs trade in or carvana or zoom offer, couple things from experience that may help others:
- The KBB.com value calculator seemed to be pretty accurate as it relates to "private party sale" range estimate in regards to current market for model S's.
- Craigslist is only $5.00 per ad, and still gets a lot of good attention from potential buyers. I tend to do multiple CL's across the nearest larger cities to get max coverage. I've sold a couple of cars successfully just using CL over the years, including just a few months ago.
-Autotrader is reasonably priced as is Ebay. No final value fee from ebay, just a flat $55 listing fee through September. Ebay gets you LOTS of views/attention. As does AutoTrader. You want as much coverage via advertising as you can get. Other benefit of autotrader is that aggregators like Autotempest pick up whats on AutoTrader.
-If you want to get max $, imperative to take LOTS of good pics of the car fully cleaned/vacummed, and empty of personal items/belongings. I tend to take at least 60-70 high quality photos of EVERYTHING and store them in a google photo album and provide the link to serious inquiries.
-If your home/driveway isn't the best backdrop, consider going somewhere else that has great scenery and good backdrop, to take your photos. I cant stress enough the value of great photos to market your product.
-Patience. It's not excessively difficult to weed out tire kickers via email/text. Also, appears that when people see a thoroughly written ad with tons of pics? They see that you are not an easy scam mark. Also, to get the max price, expect it to take a week or two or longer on average even in this current hot market.
-Set your price realistically, then lower by a few hundred once per week if you feel your price may be high for the market.
In the end, I sold in less than two weeks via the ebay ad for a price that was thousands more than the best carmax/carvana/vroom/dealership offer (I really dont think they factor in FSD value..but when selling privately? FSD absolutely has market value)and extremely close to my initial asking price. And the sale was easy. Out of towner who called me, we discussed details, I answered all questions, provided any/all pics that he requested. Wire transfer for full amount came in less than 24hours. Buyer handling all transport costs. I also had a local person who reached out to me after seeing the CL ad but after I had committed (verbally) to the out of town offer. The local offer was going to be at 100% full price sight unseen next day. But, 1)I dont do business that way/I honor my commitments 2)My 20+year ebay rep is 100% perfect, and I think that also may have been a factor in my sale 3)Bird in the hand, as they say...
Good luck to all that are selling their used Tesla's to move up to the refresh models. A little effort and patience in this market? Can mean thousands more dollars in your pocket.
- The KBB.com value calculator seemed to be pretty accurate as it relates to "private party sale" range estimate in regards to current market for model S's.
- Craigslist is only $5.00 per ad, and still gets a lot of good attention from potential buyers. I tend to do multiple CL's across the nearest larger cities to get max coverage. I've sold a couple of cars successfully just using CL over the years, including just a few months ago.
-Autotrader is reasonably priced as is Ebay. No final value fee from ebay, just a flat $55 listing fee through September. Ebay gets you LOTS of views/attention. As does AutoTrader. You want as much coverage via advertising as you can get. Other benefit of autotrader is that aggregators like Autotempest pick up whats on AutoTrader.
-If you want to get max $, imperative to take LOTS of good pics of the car fully cleaned/vacummed, and empty of personal items/belongings. I tend to take at least 60-70 high quality photos of EVERYTHING and store them in a google photo album and provide the link to serious inquiries.
-If your home/driveway isn't the best backdrop, consider going somewhere else that has great scenery and good backdrop, to take your photos. I cant stress enough the value of great photos to market your product.
-Patience. It's not excessively difficult to weed out tire kickers via email/text. Also, appears that when people see a thoroughly written ad with tons of pics? They see that you are not an easy scam mark. Also, to get the max price, expect it to take a week or two or longer on average even in this current hot market.
-Set your price realistically, then lower by a few hundred once per week if you feel your price may be high for the market.
In the end, I sold in less than two weeks via the ebay ad for a price that was thousands more than the best carmax/carvana/vroom/dealership offer (I really dont think they factor in FSD value..but when selling privately? FSD absolutely has market value)and extremely close to my initial asking price. And the sale was easy. Out of towner who called me, we discussed details, I answered all questions, provided any/all pics that he requested. Wire transfer for full amount came in less than 24hours. Buyer handling all transport costs. I also had a local person who reached out to me after seeing the CL ad but after I had committed (verbally) to the out of town offer. The local offer was going to be at 100% full price sight unseen next day. But, 1)I dont do business that way/I honor my commitments 2)My 20+year ebay rep is 100% perfect, and I think that also may have been a factor in my sale 3)Bird in the hand, as they say...
Good luck to all that are selling their used Tesla's to move up to the refresh models. A little effort and patience in this market? Can mean thousands more dollars in your pocket.
