Used Car Pricing

Try

The best place is to look at newspaper classified ads or other magazines in your area that sell cars to see if there are any models like yours for sale. Compare their price to what you get on one of the pricing guides. I find the pricing guides do not give you true value. especially on trade in.

Sarge

I found the autotrader.com site invaluable. You put in your zip code and look at actual ads for cars in your geographical area. You drill down to the make, model, and year. You can't find a more real-world indicator IMO (realizing that asking and actual selling are going to be slightly different).

It came in real handy last year when dealing with an insurance company on the total-out/buy-back value of a vehicle of mine that their policy holder hit. As far as I'm concerned, NADA vaules (which the ins. co. iniitally insisted on using) are fraudulent - and I proved it several ways in that situation. I ended up getting almost twice what they insisted they could only pay - and what I got represented a true street value (what you'd have to pay to get the same car in the real world).

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')

One thing to keep in mind when looking at the newspaper is that asking price is not the same as selling price. I would trust the on-line sources more than I would ads in the paper.

-------------- Alex