Anyone use Carmax to Sell / Buy?

[mrlenjr]

The appraisal from carmax is FREE and good for 7 days. I sold my mother-in-laws car to them and it was well worth it. I got more than I thought it was worth, and more than I was selling it for. Selling any car yourself is a PITA. Too many stupid low-ballers calling you at any hour of the day.

[bheinen74]

Originally Posted by vr4Legacy

Thanks Bags, this is what I am looking for.

In WV you only pay taxes on the difference if you trade, BUT my local dealer has his cars priced at least $2k above anything I can find privately and even through CarMax.

My max price is $12k, I hope to get $6k MIN out of my Hyundai.

$6 @ 5% tax = $300
$12k @ 5% tax = $600

My dealer is nowhere close to a $300 difference, so for my situation it's not worth considering. That's assuming I pay the MAX and get the MIN. I hope to do better on both sides. Even if I haggle and swindle, I doubt I'll get that close. Plus he doesn't have anything lower mileage in my price range. But thank you everyone for the advice.

As for selling it outright, that's still on the back burner. But if I can get a resonable price from Carmax outright, it's not worth the hassle for me.

KBB has it at ~$6k trade in and ~$7.5k retail. Carmax has them selling with similar mileage and options at $9k min. So I'm hoping to get closer to the retail price. Just curious if anyone has any first hand experience and where Carmax has priced them before I drive 140 mi roundtrip.

I found a 2006 Forester with 73k miles 5spd Premium with Sunroof, EXACTLY what I am looking for at a good price.

I'm still debating getting a loan and selling outright too. Then just paying off the loan when I sell the Hyundai.

I have a feeling I might be taking a trip to Carmax lol. Maybe I can take the wife and get some shopping done too.

Thanks again everyone for the pointers and tips

If you have a older Hyundai (1986-2004) yes.
, expect to get KBB or NADA "trade in value" of a poor condition car, no matter if you have mint or salvage. Hyundai has NO retail value, and i am serious on that NO= NONE. Sorry to break the news. Newer Hyundai's, are good and no related issues of the early ones.

[vr4Legacy]

Thanks everyone for the input. I bought the Forester this weekend. I was able to scrounge up the cash. My MIL offered to lend me the difference until the Hyundai sells. I let her know how much safer the Subaru would be for her grandson in the back seat

Now I just need to sell the Hyundai lol. If I don't sell it outright before my 30 day tags expire on my Subaru, I'm taking it to Carmax.

Originally Posted by bheinen74

If you have a older Hyundai (1986-2004) yes.
, expect to get KBB or NADA "trade in value" of a poor condition car, no matter if you have mint or salvage. Hyundai has NO retail value, and i am serious on that NO= NONE. Sorry to break the news. Newer Hyundai's, are good and no related issues of the early ones.

I have an '06, which is when they started getting reliable. It's been a good car for my wife, just not what I need or want now. Carmax has plenty listed above $9k, so it has some retail value.

Thanks again for all the input and feedback.

[agosul]

I just took my 2009 Forester to carmax and they offered me 12000 for it. It is a base model with no extra features except for an auto dim mirror. It has just over 70000 miles on it. It had some paint damage in a few small places. The 12,000 they offered is 500 over kbb excellent price. I was pleasantly shocked at the great price! The dealer only wanted to offer 9500 for trade in.

[iainb]

Selling a car to CarMax is a complete rip-off. How else can they claim to sell their cars "below Kelley Blue book" if they don't pay bottom dollar for them in the first place?

7 years ago CarMax wanted to give me $1200 for my Saturn on trade-in.

This past summer, 7 years later, I got $2000 for it when we bought our Outback. The Saturn now had a dent in the hood, a sagging headliner, broken map lights and about 30k more miles...

[fatabbot]

Blanket statements about selling a car to Carmax are silly. It all depends on the car you're selling. If it's something they're going to put on the lot and eventually sell for their inflated price, they'll give you a pretty fair amount for the car. If it's a car that they know they're just going to end up wholesaling, then expect to be low balled.

I've gotten bids from Carmax on dozens of cars. Most have been fair, a few have been laughable.

[vr4Legacy]

I keep reading conflicting results with Carmax. As can be seen in the two posts above. It seems though, that the negative all come from cars that are no longer manufactured or possibly not in "excellent" condition.

As I understand it, Carmax is picky on what they will resell, and if your car is "excellent" their objective is to keep it on the lot and sell it, so they can offer a little higher price, because they know what they can get retail.

With anything they don't consider "excellent" it's off to wholesale, so you get wholesale trade in prices.

Case in point, I just bought my '06 for $10,500, a little below NADA and it's in great mechanical shape. However it has a small nick in the dashboard and a mark on one of the armrests. The paint has the usual 7 year old scuffs, but nothing through the paint. The guy I bought it off of said he was offered $8500 at CarMax. But I could see how they don't consider the car "excellent". IMO it's in great shape for a 7 year old car and excellent mechanical shape with low mileage. I can deal with a few blemishes given I have full detailed maintenence history from the original owner.

IMO, my Hyundai would meet their "excellent" criteria, so hopefully I could get a decent offer.

Nonetheless, I have someone interested, hopefully I seel it outright. If not I'll report back how my Carmax experience goes.

[2013OB]

Anytime you use a middleman, you will not get the $$$ you are looking for on the vehicle--trade in, Carmax. On the flipside, if you want to wash your hands of a vehicle quickly, its not a bad route.

You could spend days, weeks, or even months trying to sell the vehicle private party. It took me 3 months to sell an SUV several years ago and probably wasnt worth the $1,500.00 in hassles that I had to deal with---flakes, people wanting to put it on payments, trading for this, and most importantly my time.

[subiesailor]

Sell to carmax sure they tend to over pay for clean cars - mechanically they can be crap but if the car is clean they'll pay top dollar for em.

NEVER buy from CARMAX! ^ see comment above - they over pay for cars they buy - and they jack the prices up far far too high. When looking for a G35X for my dad this summer - Carmax had three 08's locally for just shy of $30,000 all of them with over 60K on the clocks all three had spotty dealer maint history. We bought a crazy clean 09 G35X with 40K from a small high end car dealer for $23,000 very good dealer maint history the car looked as if it could have rolled off the assembly line the day before.

[iainb]

Originally Posted by vr4Legacy

I keep reading conflicting results with Carmax. As can be seen in the two posts above. It seems though, that the negative all come from cars that are no longer manufactured or possibly not in "excellent" condition.

FWIW - My Saturn was in excellent condition, Saturn (the company) was still very much in business and the mileage of the car was stupid low- less than 30k for a 4 year old car.