Canadian used car prices can be confusing if you don’t know there is a difference between these prices and the ones established in the US for the same car. It is not only a question of changing US dollars in Canadian dollars. In fact, there are makes and models that can be sold in the USA, but are forbidden in Canada and vice versa.
In the United States the main source of used car prices is the Kelley Blue Book that covers the wide variety of vehicles available on the market. It’s hard to find a Canadian equivalent of this USA pricing book. A candidate can be considered the Canadian Black Book, but this one doesn’t include the list of prices for motorcycles and other vehicles that are part of the Kelley Blue Book. You will be able to find out the reference price points for motorcycles, snowmobiles and other vehicles that aren’t cars only in the Canadian Blue Book. So, when you think about prices don’t automatically think about a Blue Book, because in Canada you will not find car pricing in such a book.
Another problem with the Canadian Black Book is that it’s not available for private individuals. This book is released every two weeks only for dealerships, for the insurance companies on the market and other automobile wholesalers. As a private individual, you will have to find a third party that has access to this book or another way of calculating an accurate Canadian used car price. The only help the Canadian Black Book offers to both buyers and sellers of used cars is a guidebook that is released once a month. The main difference between this guide and the Canadian Black Book is represented by the level of details provided. In the guidebook you will only find the maximum and minimum prices that should be paid for each car model that can be sold in Canada.
The only rule that applies to the Canadian used car prices as well as to the USA used car prices is the depreciation factor that occurs in time as the car is used. Canadian buyers are interested in a mileage expressed in kilometers. So, as long as you know the mileage and are able to asses the damages that are visible on a used car you will be able to estimate its value. The only thing you will have to do is deduct the cost involved by the damages from the Black Book value of the car you want to sell or buy.
If you find this confusing you can at any time have a talk with a mechanic or a dealer or pay a visit to an online website that has access to the Canadian Black Book. One option would be the Canadian Car Prices website which can provide you with the value of a used car you are interested in as long as you agree to pay a monthly fee for membership. It’s a trust-worthy website because it uses the Canadian Black Book which is the reference point of most banks and finance companies. Another option is the website of the Canadian Black Book that allows you to search for particular information in exchange for a fee. The only way you can get free access to the Canadian Black Book is by being a member of the British Columbia Automobile Association. If you are a member, all you need to do in order to find out a Canadian used car price is to visit their website, enter your BCAA membership number and launch a search.
Post tags: Tags: British Columbia Automobile Association, Canadian Car Prices, Canadian Used Car Prices, kelley blue book
So you’ve leased a car, loved it for the whole 2 years period, but the end of the leasing contract is slowly getting closer. The fact is that you love the car and would not want to give it up. Thankfully, because of that reason car dealers gave the client the option of buying the car at the end of the lease. He would only have to pay for the car’s already depreciated value (basically buy it at used car price). There are lots of reasons for you to keep the car that you leased.
On of the best things is the buy-out price that is considerably reduced (that’s how depreciation value works) which can turn the decision to buy this car into a great deal. First of all you don’t have to pay as much for a car that you already know its reliable and sturdy, heck you were the one driving it for the past two years, so automatically you know it has been taken good care of. You already hold the whole mechanical history so no surprises there, you don’t have to face another grueling hassle with dealers or you simply love the car, got very comfortable in it and don’t feel like changing soon.
The easiest way to purchase your leased car is to have a look at the residual value that’s crossed in the lease contract. Once you’ve found out the purchase price, you can go online and access a system like the Edmunds.TMV (True Market Value) system, or the KBB (Kelley Blue Book) and get an accurate purchase price for it. If the online price for it’s used value is higher than your purchase price written in the contract, than you’re up for a great deal.
On the other hand, if the TMV price is lower than the price you have on the contract, don’t be disappointed. First of all you need to keep in mind that since your car is not longer new, they don’t actually want it back, but they won’t give it up for just about nothing. Therefore a little negotiation seems to be in order. Firstly you should head back to Edmunds or Kelley Blue Book and print the report you have been given with the car’s market value and other pertinent specs. Armed with the technical data about the car and its market value you can head to the dealership and go one on one with the dealer. If you make a convincing case, they might actually drop the purchase price on the car, since they already have their winnings over the 2 years period. Of course there may be companies that have a policy against it. It depends on what kind of leasing company you’re working with and if the dealer needs a sale or not.
One of the best ways to make sure you’re driving YOUR car when exiting the dealership is to “pull” the dealer’s tongue. You have to assume that, once the car is returned the dealer has two choices: either place the car for sale as used, or turn it over to an auction house. If the car is shipped to an auction house, you may have a window since the dealership would have to take whatever prices comes from the auction, and on the plus side, the have to pay the auction house commission plus transport fees. No matter what happens at that auction, the price will definitely be below the car’s residual value, which makes your offer to purchase it the best decision the dealer could make.
Post tags: Tags: edmunds tmv, kelley blue book, Lease Car
The Internet has become a market in itself where great deals are easier to find and your choices aren’t limited by location. When it comes to buying online a car from Japan the main challenge that you will have to face is the language barrier. So, you should first of all find a dealer that speaks English unless you are a Japanese fan.
The Japanese used cars are very popular in the United States and not only because of the lower price and the guarantee of well-built cars. A Mitsubishi or a Lexus are great choices and making the purchase online can also save you time. First of all you should decide upon the type of car you want to purchase because the variety can be overwhelming if you don’t do your homework in advance. The main brands you may be interested in are Honda, Subaru, Toyota, Mazda, Nissan and Mitsubishi. You should also think about the year, not only about the make and model because a 2004 model may not have all the features of a 2009 model.
I’m sure your budget is also a factor that influences your choice and has determined you to buy online a car from Japan. So, refine your possible choices by adding the price filter. Your budget should range between $2,500 and $9,500, but if you want to buy a luxury model you should prepare yourself to pay more than that.
The website where you decide to look for one of these cars should be a reputable one that you are sure you can trust. Some examples would be the Kelley Blue Book website, the CarMax and the Auto Trader site. They might ask you to register on their website but don’t worry because registering is as free as searching for the car you can’t wait to buy. In order to perform your search you should just follow the instructions displayed on the Internet page and just enter the make, the model and the year of a possible car you could be interested in. You can limit the results returned by also specifying the price range you are comfortable with.
The next step that will take you closer to buying a car online from Japan involves browsing the results you have received. Take your time and read the description of the cars listed and pay attention at the warranty offered (if there is one), the number of miles the car has on board and at the financing options that may be available. Then, you should check out the pricing. Most of the companies will ask you to pay a 100% advance payment before they start exporting the car and before confirming the purchase. The price you will pay can be only the price of the car if you have a storage space that allows you to store all the cars you might want to buy before getting them home or a price that includes other services as well. There is the FOB price (Free on Board) that will include the car’s value and the export/custom fees, but not the freight, so you should ask your agent about that. Another option is CIF (Car cost+Insurance+Freight), an option that most people that buy online a car from Japan choose.
You should pay that price for the car offered with the best warranty, at the best price. Contact the dealer through the purchasing website and arrange all the other details. Most Japanese used car dealers won’t close the deal before you make a visit to their dealership, but you can try to work around it.
Post tags: Tags: auto trader, buying a car online from Japan, CarMax, kelley blue book
If you feel it’s time for a new car, than it means that the old one has got to go. When selling the car it’s only natural that you would want to get as much as possible for you. When attempting to sell a car locally you are limited on options. Either you choose to trade or sell it to a used car dealership, or you go privately and try to sell to another individual. If you go by the private party system, than you’re bound to get more for the car, more than a dealership anyways despite the extra work involved. There are some things you need to do though before attempting to sell. You need to ensure that your car is very presentable and in its best shape, afterwards you need to find out exactly how much you can get for it.
The first thing you do is take it to take the car to a mechanic. Make an inside and out inspection of the car and find out if you have to do any repairs or if there is the need for any type of work in the near future. That will be useful cause if the car is and will be working properly for a while now, you can offer the customer some level of guarantee, which will certainly bring more interested people to your doorstep. Get an estimated cost from the mechanic. If there are any repairs needed to be done, you should try and make the necessary repairs if you are able to pay for them, because a fully functional car may bring you a big profit that will undermine the costs for repairs to the car.
Search online for car price guides like the Kelley Blue Book pricing system or the Edmunds TMV system to find out the approximate value of the car. Try to keep to these two guides since KBB and Edmunds TMV are the best rated car guides online, providing a whole lot of options and give the most precise prices online.
Establish a price for your car. Take in consideration eventual price subtractions in case you have not done the repairs yourself, or if the car will be in need of repairs soon. Consider upping the price by about 10% so that you can negotiate with the customer safely and still be close to the price you were expecting for it.
A car will never sell if it’s not properly cleaned. Therefore an automatic car wash is a requirement if you want to get it sparkly clean. Get the interior cleaned completely, vacuum everything including carpets, seats, under the seats and other tight places. Take out any unnecessary or personal things that don’t belong in there. You don’t want the customer to leave with a little extra.
Make a trip to a local hardware store and aquire a “FOR SALE” sign. Write a limited amount of pertinent information about the car, the price and your phone number on the sign and place it in view. Even better, you can go to Edmunds.com purchase for less than $2 an official Edmunds For Sale sign, that looks more official and that holds all the info you need.
Create a couple of flyers containing some pictures of your car and a small description, and post them around town. Try to make the flyers as amusing and attractive as possible. There are several design software downloadable programs that can turn a sheet of paper into a colorful flyer in no time.
Place them around and let the customers come.
Post tags: Tags: kelley blue book, sell a car, Sell A Car Locally
There are certain websites on the internet that we can access and find out valuable information about cars, especially car values. Car values Blue Book is the website concept like Black Book Values and it has a lot of features about cars.
The Blue Book website is a trusted resource about new cars, used cars, dealers and inventory, loans and insurance. And the most important it has a feature that shows to its users an estimative value of their car. For people that try to sell a car this tool is perfect, because the website analysts study every days car price listings in order to give to the users of the car values Blue Book the best estimation of their car, after some dates are inserted. Of course car sellers are not forced by anyone to sell their cars with the prices indicates by the website. They can try to sell with bigger price or lower price because website is just bring to the sellers an estimative price used by the sellers of the same car model to sell their own cars. It is a price that can be changed due to the condition of your car also. Is the car is in very good shape you can ask more money on it, but if the car is in a very bad condition, you have to lower the price to sell it.
Also the car values Blue Book website is a good instrument for buyers. When a customer wants to buy a car, he can calculate first the value of the car that he wants to buy, so he knows for sure that the price that he negotiated with the seller was the right price for the specified car model and year. And according to the value he finds on the website, he can also negotiates with the seller in order to obtain a better price, but that also depends very much of the car status.
The Blue Book website is also helping its visitors to find all the details about loans for buying a car or about leasing companies and the consultants can help you find the best alternative between loan and lease and also can help you choose the best option with the lowest costs so you can buy the car that you wish for. Insurances are also very important after you bought a car, so the websites indicated are giving you the best choice, helping you choose what is perfect for your car.
The website that is the most complex in this sense is kbb.com, Kelley Blue Book. This website is having all the information necessary for car owners, car buyers, car sellers and dealers of cars.
Post tags: Tags: blue book, car blue book, Car Values Bluebook, kelley blue book
Trying to get rid of your car and find something better? Is it sitting in your garage doing nothing, only gathering rust? Then it looks like you need to get rid of it and fast. Here are a series of instructions that will help you improve your selling skills and help you get as much a win as possible at your transaction.
First of all, know your car’s value. Do some digging and find your car’s true value in toe Kelley Blue Book. The Blue Book is a catalog of car values that is available in libraries or at banks or even online. This is an important factor so that you may get an idea of a starting price.
Next in line is market research. Try to gather as much info as possible on the current value of your car. Look for similar models everywhere: papers, auto trader publication, used cars dealers. This will enable you to know how your car stands against the competition.
After you’ve studied the market figure out where do you stand, above or below the average market value for your car. Think of all the factors like car’s condition, mileage, any upgrades you’ve done to it after purchasing, exotic paint jobs and additional repairs added to the engine, transmission or body work.
Take care of the car’s image. Make it as presentable as possible, a wash and a wax are advised. Do some interior clean-up, empty the trunk clean it, and fix any small problems that may cause you or the buyer displeasure. Broken knobs, sticking windows torn upholstery, all these are problems that may dampen the price to inconvenient scales. Details are everything.
Gather al the papers tied to the car and be sure to have them in order. Service and repair records are a requirement so you may prove the additions and upgrades that you’ve done on the car. It would be wise to make some photocopies of all the records to give the prospective buyer. Don’t leave any parking tickets or other bills unpaid, and make sure that the registration is not expired. If you have to, contact the department of motor vehicles or any other authorized automobile club to find out if you need a smog certificate. Be careful where you look for it. The smog parameters may be different from state to state.
Next step would be advertising. Seek out online sites and bulletin boards. Places signs and adds to all possible locations of interest, a repair shop, a grocery store, near official buildings and another thing that is a must: place ads in local newspapers, and last but not least place a detailed “FOR SALE” sign on your car. Try to make it as captivating as possible.
When a buyer show’s that he might be interested. Be sure that you got your act together. You have to be able to answer questions like “Why do you want to sell the car?” ”How long have you had it?” etc. these questions answered nicely will give your buyer more confidence in you assuring him that you’re a serious seller.
And the final step, negotiating a price. Try to appear as mulling over the buyer’s first offer, even if it’s bigger than you had hoped for. This will give you away and he may deduct from the price, sometimes considerably. Try to avoid making a counteroffer to a very low offer, since it might insult the buyer so try to decline politely.
Follow through these steps and you’ll be successful.
Post tags: Tags: Best Way To Sell A Used Car, kelley blue book, smog parameters
There always comes a time in our lives when we’ve got to get rid of the old and come in with the new. But especially when it comes to cars we should do that in the most advantageous way possible.
First of all you must know that you can trade your car when you purchase a new one, but you might get a better deal if you sell it yourself. If you choose the last option you should be able to appreciate the value of your car. To do that you will find that the Kelley Blue Book is a real help. Moreover, you should gather all your maintenance records, manuals, original accessories that will prove that the car is in great shape. You should also get your car washed and ready to go.
That being taken car of, let’s now consider the best ways you can sell a car. One step would be advertising the sell in the classified section of the local newspaper. You should consider the internet as well, because nowadays people prefer technology and its accessibility.
The internet can be used for more than advertising. Special sites like Auto Trader, eBay or cars.com were specially created to ease the selling process of a car. Such sites will give you the possibility to post pictures, pricing information and other details about your car. The huge advantage of this selling alternative is the fact that bidders from all over the world will be able to see your offer and try to get a good deal. But you should be prepared for possible different tax structures. Just to be aware of the situation you should visit the local Department of Motor Vehicles.
Another alternative included in the best ways to sell a car would be a dealership. There are also specialized companies that buy cars and can be a great choice if you want the selling process to be simple. Moreover, depending on the type of your car and the conditions involved, the company will make a fair offer when it comes to the price and will not pressure you into buying a new vehicle.
Selling the car to the dealership and getting a new one in return it’s another good option if you are interested in getting a new car. If the car you are selling is still financed you will still have to cover some payments, but they might be reduced, depending on what new car you are choosing. Your car will be appraised by the dealership using the National Auto Dealers or the Kelley Blue Book. You can ask which one of them they use, so that you can determine if the price is right.
These, I consider to be the best ways to sell a car. But you needn’t choose only one. You should evaluate the offers you get as response to your adds in the newspaper or online and the offers from dealerships and just choose the best one. Don’t limit your options! Explore them all!
Post tags: Tags: best ways to sell a car, car sales, kelley blue book
The KBB used car values are listed in the Kelly Blue Book which is a car valuation publication that is also available online. It was created in order to help both consumers and sellers with putting a cash value on cars. Originally, the book was a trade publication that was used by the automotive industry insiders, but later on the manual became available for the consumer market and now it is the most popular car valuation source available.
The book contains car values with the suggested retail prices that car dealers would ask for an automobile, based upon the make, model, year and mileage of the vehicle. Recently, the book also offers values for suggested private party retail asking prices in order to help those people that want to buy or sell car privately. You need to know that the values listed in the KBB are not set in stone and you should consider them as an estimate of what the asking price of a vehicle would be.
You need to know that it is wrong to consider the KBB values as the fair selling price of a certain car. As we mentioned before, the values offered in the book are simply suggested asking prices, not estimations of the actual price tags that the cars will sell for. Most likely, the actual selling price of a car will be lower in comparison to the one that you find in the book. To give you a relevant example, when you sell a home, the final sale price is unlikely to be just as high as the initial asking price, unless there are many potential buyers who are willing to pay more.
The KBB is very useful for those people that do not want or do not know how to negotiate. Why? Because the car’s seller will surely cite the value of the car cited in the KBB and he will be willing to sell the car at that price. It is recommended to let the seller know that you know how the KBB works, and come up with a reasonable counter offer which is based upon the actual sale prices of similar cars. You will most likely save a couple of hundred dollars if you can prove that you know the KBB values.
Of course the KBB used car values do have their limitations because these are in most cases limited to the most common vehicles bought for normal transportation necessities. Collector cars, vintage cars, classics, hot rods and so on will not have an accurate KBB value due to the fact that the market for such rare cars can vary greatly upon the tastes of a few wealthy buyers. These types of cars are most likely to be sold on auctions where the final price is unknown until the auction ends.
At KBB’s website located at www.kbb.com you will also find a price that indicates “what consumers are actually paying for this vehicle.” Most likely, this value is a better guide in comparison to the MSRP.
If you don’t know how to use their website, here are a couple of simple instructions to follow:
First, access the website which we’ve mentioned above and click on the “new cars” option in order to access pricing info for the new cars that you are interested in buying. You now need to click on the appropriate make & model and a list of options will appear. After that, you will choose the model that you want and you will find out the car’s MSRP as well as the invoice value. If you want to buy a used car, go to the “used cars” menu option and do the same thing as above.
If you want to sell a car but you do not know how much to ask for it, you must select the appropriate condition of your vehicle. If the car has little to no exterior flaws (dings and/or minor scratches) and has no history of major damages or repairs, you should consider it to be in a “good” condition. For more serious defects, list the car as being in a “fair” condition.
You will need to choose what type of car value you are looking to establish. Don’t forget that the trade-in value is different in comparison to its private party transaction value.
Post tags: Tags: kelley blue book, new car values, used car values
