Determining your car's value is an important part of the buying and selling process that depends on a range of factors and requires you to take an honest appraisal of your car's condition. Properly appraising your car's value is important if you want to sell your car quickly and get a fair price for it.

Methods of Valuing Your Car

Presumably, you want to know your car's value because you are planning on selling or trading it in. The industry standard for determining a cars value is the Kelley Blue Book which is available for free at their website or at most public libraries. The Kelley Blue Book values you car for three selling purposes: trade-in value, retail value and private party value. The trade-in value is what you should expect from a dealer if you are exchanging it as part of a sale for a newer car. The trade-in value is less than what you would get in a private sale because the dealer needs to recondition and then flip the car at retail value for a profit. The private party value is what you should expect to be paid in cash for your vehicle when putting it up for "sale by owner." Finally, the retail value is what you would expect to pay for the car at a dealership and it is often several thousand dollars more than the private sale value. The retail value is not what you would charge in a private sale but you can however entice a buyer by noting the difference between your price and the retail value.

Appraising Your Car

To determine your car's value, you will need to asses your car's condition, evaluate any damage and make a list of all of its features. When assessing the condition of your vehicle, look at your car as if you were about to buy it. You do yourself no favors by trying to inflate the price of your car by glossing over its blemishes and weaknesses--the customer will not be so kind. Furthermore, the features, mileage and condition of your vehicle are necessary to get an accurate Blue Book value. Kelley Blue Book grades its appraisals on four levels; excellent, good, fair, and poor. To be graded excellent, a car would need to appear to be brand new. Some cars with low mileage might qualify in this category if they have been immaculately cared for. However, as much as you would like to believe that your car is in excellent condition, most used cars with a moderate amount of mileage on them are actually in good condition. A good car is well cared for, has no engine or drivetrain problems and only has superficial, if any, wear on the paint, interior and glass. A fair car would be one that has some minor damage, less than desirable blemishes and will need a minimal amount of servicing to be in good running condition. A poor car is anything worse than fair. Kelley Blue Book does not give a value for poor rated cars since their worth can vary widely. If you are trying to sell a car in poor condition take the fair condition value and subtract the cost of the repairs necessary to get it to fair condition. For instance, if you have a car valued in fair condition at $5000 and it has a bad transmission ($1,500), a cracked windshield ($250) and torn or cracked upholstery ($1,000) then you should try and get in a private deal about $2,250.

High Performence Vehicles

Heavily modified sports cars and off-road vehicles can be much more difficult to place a value on. Determining the worth of a vehicle like this is more often the result of negotiation between you and the buyer. The best course of action in this case is to audit the improvements that you have made and to gather as many receipts as possible to determine the value that you have added to the vehicle. You will most likely not be able to tack the total amount of these improvements on to the Blue Book value, but you should at least be able to recoup 50% of these improvements in a private sale.

Source:

Kelley Blue Book