Don't people buy cars privately any more?

[Tradingdown]

Tough times mean that I'm trying to sell my car privately to buy a supercheap runaround. It is on Autotrader for just under £7000 which is £500-1500 less than dealers' ads for almost identical cars and still has 6+ months manufacturer's warranty left, full service history etc.

OH says no one buys privately any more because everyone leases or finances cars, even cheap used ones.
Is he right?
Where do you buy/sell them if you don't want to sell at rock bottom to a dealer?

Cazoo all the way

We sold our last car privately last summer. It was sold for £32k so people do still buy more expensive cars privately. We used autocar too. It does take some stamina though as people try and take the piss.

No I would never buy privately I know they are a bit cheaper but I wouldnt know what Im looking at or know how to get recompense if something was wrong. Worried about being scammed.

Because if it turns out to be a total shithouse you've lost 7k

Not for as much as £7k. we buy any car would be better. Pop your reg in and see what they’d offer. I was surprised, but never took them up as really needed my car as my brand new one wasn’t ready, but they offered me an alternative car to drive as they were taking too long.

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I think the change in tax rules was partly responsible for the decline in private sales - as you can no longer 'buy out' the remaining tax and have to re tax yourself it's a lot more faff.

The last - and only - time I bought a car privately was in 1997. There’s a lot of reassurance in buying from a dealer.

I just had to buy a second-hand car to replace my previous second-hand car, which the insurance company had written off.

No, I wouldn't buy privately because there's very little you can do if there's a fault that you didn't spot when inspecting it. I will only buy a car if it comes with a 12-month MOT, new tyres and a fair amount of confidence that I'll be able to take it back to get faults sorted out without being threatened with violence.

We buy any car. Have sold 4 cars to them and every single time got the price we were quoted with nothing taken off.

I'm not mechanically minded so always buy from a dealer. Although I did buy a car privately from a friend about 4 years ago. Bought it for £50 had fun with it for a year and sold it privately on Gumtree for £1500.
I've bought two cars from dealers in the past year,paid cash for both of them. One still has 2 years warranty on it and the local dealership keep emailing me wanting to buy it back. The other was a specific make model and age that I was looking for and we got an exceptionally good deal on it as most people want the newer,flashier models,whereas I want a workhorse.Second hand car prices are so high that to buy the same model of one of them now,would be £2k more than we paid.

We buy any car offered us about 2K more than the dealer offered us against a new car. They are worth a try and we had the cash pretty instantly into our account.

Recently bought a second hand car and I purposely selected to filter out the private ones. Just not worth the risk with high value items. Sorry

We bought a lovely car privately and paid 10k for it! It was a dream - beautifully-kept, from a lovely couple and because we went private they were happy to sell it for less that we would have paid in a garage. Our latest was bought at a dealer though.

I sold our car on ebay a couple of years ago.
I wouldn't buy from anywhere but a garage because I can't afford to take the gamble that the car has a hidden fault.

Yes, we still buy privately. And we have bought and sold using Autotrader. Private buyers usually have an unrealistic price expectation. Also a lot of poor adverts. If you aren't getting enquiries within a couple of days of putting an advert on AT you're asking too much. Or your advert is really bad. Or it could just be a really undesirable combination of model and spec level. It's usually the price.

My OH recently sold his car privately using our local Facebook car buy/sell page. 5k so not quite as much as yours but we had a lot of interest and it sold in 2 days to a chap who came down from London by coach just to view it - I was really surprised by that!

OP I just sold my car to cazoo. They came to collect it and were here about 15 minutes, paid me the full offered price, and the money was in my bank before he drove it away.

Last month I ordered a new Yaris, long wait of course, We Buy Any Car offered me a very good price for my 3 yr old car, so a good lump of cash waiting as deposit on the new one, so really low repayments on that.
In the meantime I’m driving OHs Jag, tough that!.

I' bought one a month ago for under 7k privately, but I did fully check the MOT history and sussed out the seller as being genuine. Undoubtedly saved 2k + on buying the same car from a dealer. I also sold my old one more cheaply than that, again no hassle.

I would think for more expensive cars, people would prefer a dealer that is subject to the Consumer Rights Act, although theres no guarantee they will abide by it or not go out of business leaving you in the lurch.

Motorway is a good idea although I found mine on Autotrader.

I bought privately last year, car was £11k. However my husband is ex mechanic and he took along our mechanic who gave it the once over and said it was in fantastic condition.

I sold my 3 year old Mini Cooper S to We buy any car. There was no way I was advertising that privately, I would have been too worried about scams/having it stolen. They gave us way above what the Mini dealer offered, and it was done in an hour. Highly recommend them.