Maybe that old sedan you’ve kept running for years can’t fit a stroller , much less a growing family. Maybe you had a third kid – or a fourth – and need to make the leap to a three-row SUV or minivan. If you need to upgrade or change your vehicle, the car-shopping journey of choosing which new model you’re going to buy might seem like the hard part. However, there’s still the matter of what to do with your old car .
You could decide to keep the old vehicle, perhaps as the family’s extra car, but if you’re like most parents, you’ll want to unload the old car or truck and get some money back for it while it’s still in decent condition. The question is, how ?
You’ve got options. Some people get rid of their old car through a private-party sale, where you simply sell your vehicle to another person and leave the car dealerships out of it. People used to do it by placing ads in the newspaper or hanging a “for sale” sign on your car window, though these days you’re more likely to find someone selling their own car online on sites like AutoTrader or CarGurus , or even somewhere like Facebook Marketplace.
There are also a crop of new companies like Carvana that offer to buy your old car and they'll pay you in cash for it. And then there are the trade-in options, where you sell your vehicle to the car dealership, often at the same time you’re buying a new one. Typically, the dealer then discounts the price of your new family car by the amount they’ve agreed to give you for the old one.
How do trade-ins work?
When you’re ready to trade in your car, the dealership will evaluate your car's age, mileage, appearance, condition, and more. Then they’ll generate an offer of what they’ll pay you for the vehicle. Everything with a car dealership is a negotiation, so it’s up to you to push back if you think their offer is too low. Remember, you can always decide to keep your old car instead, or sell it to literally anybody else, so don’t feel pressured to accept the first offer just because it’s there.
A reminder: If you leased your current car, then more than likely, you’re not eligible for a trade-in. “You don’t own that car,” says Matt Degen, a senior editor for Kelly Blue Book . “You’re basically renting it.” You might get some leeway with the dealership if you want to break your lease early, and the dealership really wants your car back so they can sell to someone else, but don’t count on it.
Whichever way you plan to sell your vehicle, Degen says, start by using a resource like Kelly Blue Book , Edmunds , CarFax , or TrueCar to get an appraisal, which is a fair estimate of your vehicle’s value based on its age, condition, mileage, and other factors. Then you’ll know whether a dealership’s offer for your trade-in is reasonable. It might be better than you expect, he says. Over the past several years, the car industry has suffered through supply chain problems that led to a shortage of available vehicles. For this reason, dealerships were short on inventory and started making better offers for trade-in vehicles simply because they needed to get more used cars on the lot. That era is coming to an end, says Degen, but it’s still possible to get a great deal.
If you’re still making payments on a car when you choose to trade it in, remember that when you do the math – you’ll need to use some of the money from the trade-in to pay off the rest of your car loan.
As long as the car is safe, it meets your needs, and you're not just pouring money into it to keep it operating, try to run it as long as you can, especially if you can pay it off. - Matt Degen, senior editor for Kelly Blue Book
How to know if you should trade in your car
Most of the time, selling your car directly to another person, and not to a dealership or company, is the best way to maximize your value, says Matt Degen. That’s because there’s no middleman. “Remember, when you sell to a dealership or you sell to a place like Carvana or CarMax, they're going to resell it, so they need to get a profit too,” he adds. “So that's why you are usually going to get a higher price selling it to a private party than a car dealership.”
The problem with a private-party sale is that you’re on the hook for all the legwork. You’ve got to post ads for your car, and you’ve got to take the time out of your busy schedule to meet with people who respond – and who may or may not be serious about buying your vehicle. That’s why a lot of busy parents decide to forego the process and jump right to the trade-in, says Degen. You can never be sure whether you’ll find a buyer within a few days — say, by selling the car to somebody you know — or the process will drag out for months .
If you’re a parent juggling your job, baby feedings , and bedtime routines , you may well decide all this extra weekend homework just to make a bit more money selling your car simply isn’t worth it. “A lot of folks – and I can't blame them – want to just sell their car to the dealership, trade it in, and wash their hands of it, and use whatever the proceeds they get for the payment of their next vehicle,” Degen says. “That's just something you have to consider, too – what is your time worth?”
Key Takeaways
- Make sure to keep up with regular maintenance.
- Shop around to find the best deal – and do your research so you know how much your car is worth.
- Spend some time cleaning it up before taking it in to sell.
Tips for getting the most for your trade-in
From formula to diapers to daycare , parents have a long list of expenses to think about. You want to get the most you can for your used car to have more money in the bank for everything else, so follow these simple tips for getting top-dollar on a trade-in. And we’ve included some advice for how to handle the transaction once you’ve decided that a trade-in is the way to go.
1. Keep your car mileage low
The average person puts 10,000 to 15,000 miles per year on a car, says Joseph Yoon, Edmunds consumer insights analyst. Parents probably fall at the higher end of that range if they’re commuting to work, driving their kids all over town, or taking road trips. If your car falls in that range, though, you should expect to get decent value for it. But if you're trading in a five-year-old vehicle and you've got 125,000 miles on it, that's going to be a huge red flag, he says. “And it's not to say that there's anything wrong with the vehicle. It's because at higher miles, the cost of doing regular maintenance and replacing worn out parts becomes way higher.” In general, try to keep your annual mileage in the 10,000 to 15,000-mile range.
2. Put those driver’s ed tips to good use
Even if you’re the world’s safest driver, sometimes there’s no way to avoid a car accident. But when possible, do your best to drive defensively. You’ll be doing everything you can to protect your family, and maintain your car’s value at the same time, since having a serious accident in your vehicle’s history is one of the surest ways to see its value drop as a trade-in.
That said, don’t lose sleep over a little fender-bender, Yoon says. “Minor wear and tear is expected from a trade-in. Nobody drives in utopia. We all have had times where maybe some guy just shoved the shopping cart the wrong way at the grocery store, or a neighborhood kid riding a bike hit your car on the side mirror and you got a little scrape or a minor dent. That's okay.”
3. Take care of the keys
This sounds like an odd thing to care about when it comes to your car’s trade-in value. But car keys aren’t just pieces of metal like they used to be. Now keys and keyfobs come custom-made from the factory with transponders in them to talk to the car. They cost much more to replace, sometimes upwards of $500 or $600, says Yoon, so dealerships are much more prickly about making sure they get all the keys with your trade-in. So make sure your toddler doesn't hide your keys somewhere in the house to never be found again, and make sure they have working batteries in them before you go to complete the trade-in. Try storing them up high, in a specific basket or dish, out of your curious little one's line of sight (or reach!). If you do lose them, it's usually best to fork over the money to replace them before you do the trade-in.
4. Drive your old car as long as you can
Perhaps you've heard the old saying that a car loses half its value the moment you drive it off the lot. It's not quite that bad, says Degen, but it's true that a vehicle depreciates fastest during the first three to five years of its life. If you're trading in a 4-year-old car for a new one - and you do that kind of thing repeatedly - you're burning a lot of cash, says Degen.
"My general advice is: As long as the car is safe, it meets your needs, and you're not just pouring money into it to keep it operating, try to run it as long as you can, especially if you can pay it off," he says. "If you don't have a car payment, you can just save money for a new car."
5. Think of the next buyer
The more you modify your car to make it your own – by adding severe window tinting, performance tires, or a new exhaust, for example – the less desirable it might be to a dealership. Remember, they have to turn it around and sell it to someone else, so they want a car anybody would buy.
“Some people have the misconception that, oh, I put in $10,000 in modification, so it increases the value of my trade-in by $10,000,” says Yoon. “It's not true. It may even be detrimental because that's not what the general public wants.” Bottom line: Don’t personalize your car too much. If you do, the only way to recoup that value when you sell it might be to find the one other person out there who loves the vehicle that way just as much as you did.
That said, don’t fret too much about your car's color. People predominantly buy vehicles in neutrals like black, white, and silver because they believe that will help the resale value, but Yoon and Degen both say the paint job just isn’t that big a deal – you’ll probably get about the same amount of money for a blue or red car as a white one as long as the vehicle is in good condition.
6. Get it looking good
If you're trading in the family car, it's probably showing its age after years of carrying babies and small children around. Spilled milk from bottles and crusty snacks buried in the back seat are par for the course. But the reality is – nobody wants to buy an SUV that’s covered in spills or other messes, so give it a full once-over before you begin the sale process, and keep it clean until you’ve unloaded it. “Give it a nice detail inside and out,” says Degen. “Vacuum out all the Cheerios and kids' snacks and make it smell nice. We all know those scents linger!"
That doesn’t have to mean spending a lot of time or money to find a local detailer. Spend an afternoon washing and waxing the exterior of your car, plus vacuuming and wiping up all the surfaces on the inside, and that ought to do the trick. “I have a 2-year-old and my dog is 70 pounds,” says Yoon. “I traded in a car in February and I spent a lot of time vacuuming out all of the dog fur, since the car interior is black and my dog is white. After I vacuumed, it looked great.” You can even get your kids involved in the washing process – either bring them outside to watch in a bouncer , or put your older toddlers to work scrubbing down the outside with soap and water.
7. Keep up with regular maintenance
As parents, you are busy – there's no doubt about it, and getting regular car check-ups can feel like a huge hassle. But putting off routine maintenance puts your family at risk – and hurts your car’s long-term value. For example: If the brakes are squeaky, but you put off replacing the brake pads because you can’t find the time, you’re much more likely to suffer a serious mechanical failure in the brake system. Then you’re going to have to sink in a big sum of money to make the vehicle drivable again. And if you don’t, your trade-in value is going to drop by a lot – not to mention, it's unsafe to drive.
Keep up with your oil changes, and take your car in for regular check-ups if it’s getting older so you can identify small problems before they become big ones. Kelly Blue Book recommends doing this at least once a year. And yes, that means don't ignore the “check engine” light, though even Yoon admits he’s done that once or twice.
8. Shop around
Most people trade in their old car to the same dealership where they’re going to buy their new one, says Degen. It keeps things simple and saves time (a huge factor when you're a parent trying to manage it all!). But there’s no rule that says you have to do it that way. To get the best deal, shop around: Check multiple dealerships in the area, and see what car-buying sites like Carvana or CarMax would offer for your car. Just like with selling your vehicle to another individual, this puts the onus on you to spend more time getting a good deal. But it can pay off, he says, especially if you can rebut your dealership’s offer by telling them you can get a better deal down the street or in the next town over – which he highly recommends doing.
“Let's say you have a sports car like the Mazda Miata Roadster and you've just had a baby,” he says. “That's not going to fit a family of three, but you probably don't want to trade that car into a Ram truck dealer in Wisconsin in the dead of winter." They likely won't give you the highest value for it, but there might be another dealership, even one outside of your region or in another state, that would be willing to pay more for that vehicle.”
9. Use separate transactions for your trade in and purchase
Even if you're trading in your old vehicle to the same dealership where you’re buying your new one, Degen suggests treating these as two totally separate transactions. Why? When people treat this as a single transaction – which means the dealership just subtracts the value of your trade-in from the cost of the new car – the salesman might be more inclined to engage in a little bit of tricky salesmanship. For example, perhaps they’ll upsell you on expensive add-ons features for the new car by reminding you what a good deal they’re giving you on the old one.
“By having those as two separate transactions, you're saying, okay, we've got this deal,” he says. “Here's how much I'm going to pay for the new car. You get that in writing, you go forward. Then you say, okay, now as far as this car I'm trading in. Let's go over that separately. That just gives you a little more flexibility and a clearer picture of what you're actually paying for the new car and what you're getting for the old one.”
10. Stand your ground
It can seem daunting to go to a dealership and have to haggle with a car salesman who knows much more about the process than you do, says Yoon. “But if you've done the homework and appraised the vehicle correctly, definitely feel confident in the face of a pushy sales person and say, ‘Hey, I want you to match this,’ because more often than not, they will."
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