Anyone have experience in selling cars? What are the pro's and con's of selling through to a dealership vs. privately (Craigslist, Autotrader, etc)?
It is a convenience vs value trade off. Selling to the dealership will get you less than market rate (since the dealership will ostensibly turn around and sell it at market rate.) You haggle at most once. The couple of cars I have sold to Carmax usually got me with in a few hundred of KBB.com's price so I sold to them.<p>Private sell feels like running your own private dealership for a few weeks. People call and want to come see it, take test drives and haggle. It has usually taken 5-6 inquiries for me to sell privately.<p>note: N for both carmax and private sell = 2 so your milage may vary.
I'm doing this right now. I just got a quote from a local dealer. I have a 2011 Audi A4. The dealer offered $23,500 and will go to $24,000. If I sell privately, I can probably get $27,000 maybe $28,000. But, it will take weeks and I have to be very careful of scammers, etc. It's a tough call and I haven't decided what to do yet.