Your car's value depends on a variety of factors, including mileage, overall condition, features and necessary repairs. Properly appraising your car's value is important if you want to sell it quickly and get a fair price as well.

Kelly Blue Book

The Kelly Blue Book is the industry standard for determining car value. It is available on both the Internet and in print.

Necessary Information

To get an accurate value of your vehicle you will need its year, make, model, edition and mileage. Also, do an inspection of your vehicle to pinpoint things that need repairs.

Features

Do an audit of both the original manufacture and after-market features that your vehicle includes. These are things like CD/MP3 players, leather seats, power windows and doors, airbags and other perks.

Condition of the Vehicle

The Kelly Blue Book does a final determination of the value by the condition that the vehicle is in. Excellent, for mint condition vehicles; Good, for well cared for used cars with no blemishes or mechanical issues; Fair, for more seasoned road warriors that will need servicing and repairs; and Poor, for anything less than fair.

Trade-in vs. Private Sale Value

The value of your vehicle can vary depending on whether you are trading it in as part of a sale or selling it in a private transaction. Trade-in values can be up to 40 percent less than the private sale value, since the dealer must recondition and then flip the vehicle for a profit.

Getting an Answer

All of the aforementioned information will be necessary for the Kelly Blue Book or other appraisal sources to give you a final answer on your car's value. It is important to be honest when evaluating your vehicle because trying to artificially boost its value is not likely to fool a discerning buyer.

Source:

Kelly Blue Book