Nothing can last forever, not even our relationship with our beloved friend on four wheels. No matter how much you love your vehicle, a day will come where it will no longer ride the way it once did.
When it comes to that day, you might realize you don’t know what to do when you have a junk car on your hands. You might ask: how do I sell my car as junk? If you’re new to the concept, there’s a chance you’ll have no idea how to start.
Luckily, it isn’t all too difficult to sell your vehicle as junk to a number of interested buyers. All it takes is a little know-how, paperwork, and effort. What do you need to know to get started? Read on and we’ll walk you through the basics.
Get Paperwork In Order
In order to sell your car, even as junk, you’ll need to make sure you have all the appropriate paperwork together. While this might be the most cumbersome part of the car sale process, it’s also the most important.
You will need to make sure you have everything together or else the sale of your vehicle might no go through. You’ll have wasted your own time and others and be no better off for it.
The most important thing to have ready is your car title. This will prove that you have legal ownership over the vehicle and have a right to sell it off. Ensuring you have proper legal vehicle registration will be important to any reputable auto dealer.
You can contact your local DMV to see what other paperwork you might need to sell a car as junk in your area. Laws vary from state to state and even from city to city.
When you sell your car, make sure the title is transferred properly and the license plates are removed from the vehicle. You don’t want the automobile to be linked to you any longer once you’re done with the sale.
Make sure you know the true value of your automobile before going into the sales process as well. You don’t want to get much less than you really deserve!
Even when selling as a junk car, the different vehicle makes and models tend to attract different prices.
Who Buys Junk Cars?
Making a proper junk car sale will mean connecting with those interested in such a vehicle in your area. There are many different entities that may be worth reaching out to about your car.
You’ll just need to do a little research in your area to see who is offering cash for cars.
Junkyards are among the most common places to look. Most junkyards around the country will buy an old car and use it for parts. They might recycle it. The price they will be willing to offer you will be based on current scrap metal prices.
Not all junkyards are created equal. Some will offer radically different prices for the same material. Others might not offer to tow your vehicle, meaning you would need to arrange for that service yourself. That can take a big portion of the price you’d get out of the equation.
It’s important to look around and compare prices in order to find somewhere that might provide the best deal for your vehicle.
You might also find individual buyers online who would be interested in your vehicle. Websites like Craigslist are a great place to post about your vehicle as there are many potentially interested people who surf those sites.
It can be hard to get a good offer from these buyers but you also might end up being surprised.
Things to Remember
If you do connect with a potential buyer, it can be an exciting moment. You’ve likely put in a good amount of work and research already. This can be a real moment of payoff.
However, you don’t want to get so excited that you forget to take the last few essential steps before handing over your keys.
First and foremost, make sure that your car is really empty before you give it away. Check every crook, corner, and compartment. Anything that you accidentally leave inside your car when you give it away might be difficult to recover.
Make sure you’ve totally cleaned the car of all personal possessions before handing the keys off to the new owner.
You’ll also want to ensure that you get the money you promised before signing over the title to a new owner. Once the car leaves your possession, you’ll have a hard time having any negotiating power.
When you have the vehicle, you have the power, so use it. Make sure you get the actual cash in hand before losing ownership of the vehicle. This can be doubly important when selling off to a Craigslist seller, as you might not know how much you can trust them.
Scams on that platform are more common than in other places.
You don’t want to get surprised by any last-second caveats or excuses after you’ve already made the deal.
How To Sell My Car as Junk
“What do I need to know to sell my car as junk?”
It’s a common question that many automobile owners face towards the end of their vehicle’s life. If you’re curious about the process of selling a vehicle that no longer really runs, the above advice can be very helpful. It doesn’t have to be difficult to make this sale, but there are a number of things you’ll want to remember.
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