We listed our Honda for sale on Craigslist, our favorite online classifieds web site. Sold it in 4 days.
Remember the car we bought a month ago? Well now that we have that car, we had to sell our old one. We sold it through Craigslist and the process was easy as pie. We had listed the car at a price equivalent to its blue book value — $7,000 for a Honda Civic with 100,000+ miles on it.
The car we sold looked just like this one, a Honda Civic Si.
We had a few interested buyers, and even one suspicious one who hailed from Sacramento: this buyer’s email messages and terms sounded “odd”; he was offering a pretty good price on the car sight unseen. While other buyers wanted to negotiate, he sounded eager about buying the car at full price without checking it out first. And why would he want to drive all the way to the Bay Area just to buy a used car? Ah, it all sounded too suspicious and too good to be true. I could just imagine him chomping at the bit for the chance to offer us a money order or cashier’s check, no questions asked. So we didn’t bother pursuing this lead. Sure, it could have been a legitimate lead, but I’ll take my losses. During times like these, I refer to my tips for selling safely online to guide our decisions.
Fortunately, within a day, we got a buyer to settle on a decent price (around $500 off our original offer) — a young man and his mother came to a doorstep, did a test run and left happy. And we too, were left happy as we tucked our money away and got that smooth car sale out of the way — just one more among the many car sale experiences we’ve had through the years. Though we’ll miss our pretty dependable import, we’re very satisfied with the slick and fairly new family wagon we replaced our old car with.
Before I go, I’d like to leave you with some parting tips. From my own experience as a loyal user of Craigslist, I compiled some thoughts on how to list and sell your stuff online:
Quick Tips To Sell On Craigslist
#1 Use pictures. I still don’t know why there are ads that don’t include images. If I were a buyer, I’d immediately filter out those ads without accompanying photos. Who would buy something sight unseen (maybe potential scammers)?
#2 Be descriptive about what you’re selling. You only have a few seconds to catch someone’s attention.
#3 Write a good ad title. What’s good? Avoid overloading your title with punctuation marks and caps and whatever else that can put off your audience. Strange ads are a good way to scare off potential buyers. Have someone else review your ad to ensure its palatability.
#4 Deal with local buyers as much as possible so you can easily screen them. Try to pick up information about your buyer wherever you can find it. They may have an internet footprint, or a conversation with them over the phone may help you get a feel for who you are dealing with before you even meet with them. According to Craigslist’s scam manifesto, you’ll avoid 99% of scam attempts by meeting your buyer in person.
#5 Be patient. If you’re selling a popular item, there will always be a buyer out there for your stuff — at the right price. Fortunately, I have never had a problem selling anything worth selling by posting it on Craigslist. The stuff I have trouble selling won’t move for good reason (not enough value or use left in them) so I donate them instead and take the tax deductions.
#6 Price your item right. If the price is too high, you may not get enough interest. If it’s too low, potential buyers may become suspicious of your listing.
#7 Have an electronic trail of your correspondence with interested parties. Any kind of trail is useful, in case you need to refer to it at a later time (and hopefully you never have to!).
#8 Beware of fake or bounced checks and money orders. Because of this, it’s a good idea to transact with cash.
#9 Find your right sale price. Your sale’s success hinges on your ability to value your item in the used market. An item will sell for the “right price”: you can figure this out by periodically readjusting your price to gauge interest and by checking similar ad listings to your own.
By the way, I’ve also scored well by doing my online shopping with Craigslist, where we’ve picked up some awesome bargains on furniture and housewares. I’ve saved lots of time and money by going to sites like these through the years and frankly wouldn’t know what to do if these online services didn’t exist. Can you imagine having to revert to traditional paper listings, garage sales, dealerships and brick and mortar consignment centers to get the job done? 
Find out more about my thoughts on this topic in my post: Great Places to Earn and Save Money on Used Items.
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Another tip I found for selling on Craigslist is to put a URL to your blog if you have one. This adds a measure of credibility to your ad if you say an easy way to contact me is either through my blog or by using Craigslist.
Yes, that sounds like a great idea! I haven’t yet encountered Craigslist ads with links to blogs, but as part of your contact info, it sounds like a good way, as you say, to let people you know you’re on the up-and-up (unless of course you want to keep anonymous
).
‘Cash only’ is essential. And I’d check the notes.
Glad this worked for you. I’ll have some stuff to sell in November, so I might use Craigslist as well as local forums. eBay has the ‘eyeballs’ but its charges are annoying.
These are good tips for selling online in general. I started selling on eBay when it was just a few months old and discovered many of the same tips work when listing there.
So did your buyer show up with almost $7000 in cash? I have thought about larger Craigslist transactions such as this one and, though I’ve nevered entered into one, wondered if PayPal might be another option.
There you go, congrats! i just old my suv on CL last month, and while it wasn’t THAT easy (turns out SUVs certainly are on the endangered list!) it all worked out nicely. I even posted it on other sites at the same time, spending about $70, but CL won the round as always…the 3rd time i’ve sold a car on it
Now sell one on eBay!
Great post! I’ve often wondered about how to best go about selling on Craigslist with a big ticket item like that. I did use eBay to sell a car about 3 years ago, and that went well.
Thanks for the tips!
Thanks for providing real-life scenarios and tips for selling on craigslist.
I think alot of people would be pleasantly surprised at the postive results you get using such sites but many don’t bother trying because they “don’t know how”.
Congrats on getting what you wanted and thanks for taking notes!
I am curious about the cash only part… from the buyers’ perspective, would they be comfortable in handing over $7k of dough? What protection do they have in the transaction (e.g. I suppose they would want to make sure that the ownership of the car is properly transferred, etc.)
Tip #9 is a bit off. If you post your car multiple times on CL, buyers may wonder why your car hasn’t sold on it’s first posting. Most people assume something is wrong with the car and won’t waste their time. I’ve made this mistake before.
I was advised by a potential buyer to keep my ad short and concise. People don’t want to hear your story or excuses for some of your car’s faults. Include the year, mileage, vehicle specifics (engine size, trim level, options, etc). Just like a newspaper ad, I wouldn’t suggest too many cons unless they are drastic (salvage title, doesn’t run). Once buyers make the journey and see your car, they are probably more likely to overlook any minor faults your vehicle may have.
Great tips on dealing with buyers but I would suggest a short and concise ad, with pictures of the front and rear from 3/4 view, an interior shot, and an odometer shot. Best of luck to all you sellers out there.
With tip number 8 you should mention that if you’ve decided to use cash, you should always go to the bank before signing over the title to verify things. This should also be done for your own peace of mind.
Craigslist is one hell of an advertiser, and it truly gets the people’s attention. It’s a good score selling that car within 4 days alone. Great source of ads indeed!