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Selling car in Houston


congodog

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I tried to find the post, but cannot.  I have to go permanente soon, so we drove our car NOB this week to Houston and will sell it here before we leave, and then fly back.  Someone posted recently that they had sold their car to a place near the Houston airport (IAH), and then hopped on a plane back.  But I can't remember where they sold it. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a Carmax.  Can anyone help?

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6 hours ago, thesarge7 said:

WE sold our truck at Carmax in San Antonio and flew back to Guadalajara, Got a fair price for it.

Could you tell me/us 'how' you determined what a 'fair price' was for your truck?  Did you know/did they communicate with you prior to your driving to San Antonio? How new was your truck and was the condition 'like new', or less?  Thanks for considering answering these questions.

 

 

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Before you go, you need to go to carmax.com and click on sell your car and complete an applicatrion where they will give you a free appraisal that will be good for a certain number of days. No obligation.  They will include instructions on how you need to prepare for the transaction.  I think they explain how they determined their price. Of course you will not get the highest price you would like. They are in the business to make a profit, so they need to leave room for them to add in their selling price. So don't think you will get the most you can get. That is why I said they were fair.  After you do some research , you can determine what your car is worth.

For my research, I went on autotrader.com and Kelly Blue Book at kbb.com and searched out similar autos and saw what they were selling for.

When I rteturned to Mexico I found a great deal through Segundamano.com. It was a private person sale for a used car. I got a 2006 Escalade for $120,000 pesos (about $6,000 USD). Jalisco tags with about 30,000 miles. I went to a few used car lots around Guadalajara and also checked out the gringo lot in San Antonio. I am happy with my purchase and so far, so good. I have had this truck for over a year now and have not had any major problems. 

I did this because I too became permanente and did not want to go through the hassle of legalizing my U.S. plated truck. In addition, it was not practical for the streets here, a 2004 Ford F350 Super Duty dually diesel pick-up truck. Legalizing, or importing U.S. cars can be expensive and I think you need to be emotionally  attached to your car, because it is a long process and costly. And you need to be careful not to get caight up in the illegal scams that are out there. People promise you Federal tags for a very low price and they can be convincing that it is the way to go. In fact, there are many, many people driving around with those tags, but if you talk to the right people, you will find that this is not legal and can cost you if you get caught.   So, be careful.

Mexico has good cars and you can get a good deal if you shop around. Carmax is probably the quickest and easiest way to sell your car, but you may not get the top dollar you would like to get. We all think that our car is the best and deserves to fetch the highest price, but it doesn't work that way.

Best of luck to you. I hope it all works out for you.

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I drove my FJ back to Houston last August and sold it at CarMax. They give you estimated value offer online before you arrive, but the offer is contingent upon their inspection. I also had a KellyBlueBook sponsored offer from another Car dealership in Houston. I dropped the car at CarMax and waited about an hour for the inspection. When it was finished, the salesman confirmed their offer, but he also checked against KellyBlueBook, and they listed a value $1000 more than CarMax's offer. CarMax's policy is to match any higher offer, so they upped their offer by $1000 dollars. I had a check (sent to my bank) in about 90 minutes total. Very good service.

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Yes, thanks Sarge for that reasoned Post about your CarMax experience. And the same to No VanDamer!  I was not aware that CarMax had a ‘facility’ to give one an estimate of a vehicle’s potential buyout price. I had always been told, even by them, that they did not so maybe this is somewhat new. I was/am aware of the KBB sponsored offer program and have actually used that. Having a CarMax estimate will be valuable to me in the future.

Thanks again to both of you.....

 

 

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Thank you all!  We went to both Carmax and Tx Auto Direct. Both gave us offers good for 7 and 10 days respectively.  Both have multiple locations around Houston. The latter offered twice what Carmax offered, so we took it.  So happy I asked you guys!  Thank you!

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This, Carmax offer of half vs another ‘dealership’, is not unusual on a specific case but pretty amazing when looked at a macro level. Carmax probably already had ‘too many’ of the year/make/model of the car being sold and gave a price reflecting this.

My experiences with CarMax, and there have been several, is that their offers are generally below other dealers. And hardly anyone is going to offer more than KBB trade-in value on any vehicle brought to them..... otherwise how would they stay in business?!? 

My ‘retirement hobby’ over the last few years of buying US vehicles in Mexico at around trade-in has allowed some folks to get the same price without the expense of driving to San Antonio and then flying back. 

 

 

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18 hours ago, RickS said:

This, Carmax offer of half vs another ‘dealership’, is not unusual on a specific case but pretty amazing when looked at a macro level. Carmax probably already had ‘too many’ of the year/make/model of the car being sold and gave a price reflecting this.

My experiences with CarMax, and there have been several, is that their offers are generally below other dealers. And hardly anyone is going to offer more than KBB trade-in value on any vehicle brought to them..... otherwise how would they stay in business?!? 

My ‘retirement hobby’ over the last few years of buying US vehicles in Mexico at around trade-in has allowed some folks to get the same price without the expense of driving to San Antonio and then flying back. 

 

 

I'm sure that's true Rick. Actually, this was a very old car, in very bad shape, so we only expected "junk value" for it.  Even Carmax's offer was more than we'd hoped.  We had to drive it up anyway for other reasons, so we are pleased all around.

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