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Tips for Selling Your Car Quickly and at the Best Price

"Kelly Blue Book Car Value" Checklist

Take it from an expert. These are the items that will get your car sold fast, and at the right price, in order of importance.

1. Current tags. If the registration tags are about to expire, renew them.

2. Runs great? Mechanical problems need to be fixed or you won't be able to give it away to anyone but a mechanic. Smoke from the tailpipe is quite a turnoff.

3. Clean? If you haven't cleaned and detailed the heck out the car, do it now - or hire a detailer.

4. Good tires. If your tires are balding, that's a big negative. Realistically, you need to buy new ones in order to sell it. No retreads! Fortunately you can buy decent tires pretty cheaply these days (obviously pass on the Michelins and Goodyear Eagles).

5. Front Seats. The front seats need to be attractive. If there are tears, this can easily be remedied by inexpensive seat covers. Potential buyers almost never remove seat covers to look at the seats.

6. Carpet. Stained carpet can easily be fixed with Rit Dye from the supermarket. Kelly says this is one of the best tricks he knows! The dye is cheap and really makes the car seem nice and new inside. A new set of floor mats is a nice touch as well.

Selling your Car Yourself?

As my friend Kelly would say, that's the only way you're not going to literally give away hundreds of dollars unnecessarily. He used to buy and sell used cars for a living - right in front of his house - and boy, he had it down to a science.

Kelly always carried a little blue notebook with him, and in that notebook was a checklist of the most important items for being able to quickly sell a vehicle at the upper end of it's market price range. He liked to jokingly refer to it as his Kelly Blue Book Car Value guide (not to be confused with the famous Kelley Blue Book, the industry standard for market values of used vehicles).

By making sure that he routinely followed his own rules, Kelly would never get himself stuck with a car he couldn't turn around immediately. In fact, he usually sold them the very next weekend!

His Kelly Blue Book Car Value notebook actually contained two checklists - one for buying and one for selling. The best situations were when he could buy a dirty car with tears in the front seat and stained carpet; but ran well, had current tags, and good tires. Then he could just clean it, throw on cheap seat covers, dye the carpet, drop in new floor mats, and stick it in the paper the next weekend.

Buy & Sell Cars for Profit

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Best Vehicles for Flipping

If you are interested in buying and selling cars as a side business, here are the best ones to focus on, according to the many pages of scribbled notes in my friend's little blue notebook. 1. Japanese 4-door sedans. These are in high demand. Accords, Camrys, Civics, Corrolas, Maximas, Sentras and their cousins are the best bets you can make. 2. Small trucks. People need mini-pickups for their work - as Kelly used to say, "You are selling somebody a job." Often he would turn these quickly at a profit to another retailer! 3. Kid's first car. Anything that runs well, is clean, and parents would buy for their kid's first car will sell. This is more of a price range than a list of makes and models; we are talking under $2,000 here. Japanese hatchbacks are great for this category.

So whatever happened to the Kelly Blue Book Car Value notebook? Kelly has it safely tucked away. I haven't talked to him in years, but he now works in the cellular phone business (last I heard). Anytime he needs to, he can make quick extra cash by buying a good used car from somebody too lazy to clean it up right, and then reselling it to a car buyer who wants something that looks nice. (And that's pretty much all of them.)

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Disclaimer: The information on this website is for entertainment purposes only and is not to be taken for business or financial advice. Always consult your qualified financial advisor for matters that may affect your finances. This website is not affiliated with Kelly Blue Book in any way. Results are not typical and luck is a factor. Pursue the contents of this website at your own risk.