On paper a private sale is always the best money. But the headline price is not what lands in your account, and the gap between the three options is smaller than it looks once you count time, costs and risk.
Private sale: highest price, most work
Carsales, Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree put your car in front of the most buyers, and a well-presented car with a fresh roadworthy and current rego will usually fetch more this way than any other.
The cost is your time and patience. Expect to photograph and list it, answer the same questions repeatedly, arrange viewings around other people's schedules, and have a share of those people not turn up. The ones who do will often open with a number well below your asking price, standing at the kerb.
Buyers also expect a registered car to come with a roadworthy certificate, because VicRoads will not transfer it without one. That can mean a few hundred dollars of inspection and repairs before you can list at a sensible price. Serious buyers will also run a PPSR check at ppsr.gov.au to see whether there is finance owing or a write-off on record.
What a private seller is on the hook for
- A current roadworthy certificate if the car is registered, or cancelling the rego and selling it unregistered
- Being straight about known faults. Misdescribing a car can come back on you
- Meeting strangers, often at your home, and handling test drives on your insurance
- Confirming payment has actually cleared before the keys change hands
- Lodging the notice of disposal with VicRoads within 14 days, so fines and tolls stop coming to you
- Fielding the buyer's calls if something goes wrong a week later, even when you are not liable
Trade-in: convenient, but priced as a cost
Trading in only works if you are buying a car from a dealer at the same time. The bigger limit is how the dealer sees your car: as a cost they have to recover, not a sale they are making. They price it at what it is worth to them at wholesale or auction, less the effort of moving it on. On a car under $5,000, that figure can sit a long way below what a private buyer would pay.
Dealers also tend to fold the trade-in into the overall deal, so a generous-looking trade-in figure may be balanced by less movement on the car you are buying. Ask for the trade-in price and the purchase price separately so you can compare properly.
The upside is real: one transaction, no listing, no strangers, no roadworthy, and the paperwork handled on the spot.
Car buyer: fixed, same day, towed, paid by transfer
A licensed car buyer like us sits between the two. We will usually pay less than a perfect private sale, because we carry the cost of collecting, then repairing or dismantling and reselling. In return the price is fixed once we have seen the car, the tow is included, no roadworthy is needed from you, and the VicRoads paperwork is done before the truck leaves.
One thing to know about the money. Victorian law bans cash payments for scrap vehicles, so a legitimate buyer pays by bank transfer and records your ID, not with a roll of notes. The transfer lands while the truck is still in your driveway. Our page on what we buy covers what we take.
Tip. Whatever route you choose, get a car buyer's offer first. It costs nothing, takes a few minutes, and gives you a floor. If a private buyer at the kerb offers less than that, you already know to say no.
Which one is the right call?
- Sell privately if the car runs well, has or can cheaply get a roadworthy, is a model people search for, and you have a few weekends to spare. This is where the extra money is.
- Trade it in if you are buying from a dealer anyway and the simplicity is worth more to you than the difference. Get the trade-in figure on its own.
- Use a car buyer if the car would not pass a roadworthy, will not drive, needs work worth more than it is, or you want it gone with no viewings and no risk.
An example, with made-up numbers
Say a 2008 Mazda 3 with a slipping clutch and rego about to lapse. A private listing might attract offers around $2,500 from a buyer prepared to fix it and get the roadworthy themselves. A dealer might offer $1,200 as a trade-in against something newer. A car buyer might offer $1,800, collected on Thursday.
The right answer depends on whether that extra $700 is worth a month of your time and the chance the private buyer never turns up. Those figures are examples only, not quotes.
If your car sits in the second or third camp, send NZ Cars for Cash & Removals the rego and a photo and we will give you a fixed number you can hold the other options up against.
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