Buying and selling <$5000 Cars

Now that craigslist charges to list cars, the number of cars has gone down dramatically, more so on the lower end.

I have a car I might like to sell, not worth much (say 1500), and would like to buy another say <5k - where are people listing / selling these types of cars?

from my local experience. most people just list the cars for sale in the auto parts section. there is probably 25 new listings for cars in parts ans services every day in my area.

also you could advertise on facebook marketplace. it's free to advertise there. understand when you get a message is this still available, it's not usually spam. that is the default question on facebook.

"understand when you get a message is this still available, it's not usually spam. that is the default question on facebook."

And you'll usually get the message between 1 AM and 3 AM...... DAMHIK.

That being said though, FB market place is still way better than CL, especially right now.

Facebook market place sucks. I have found the replies you get is from trolls playing on thier phones. Endless still available replies only to get the next question.....what's the least you'll take??? Most often to me it seems, even if they reply they're not interested. Sucks.

This has been my same exact experience with selling a car on craigslist that was priced at $2500......

I pay the $5 and list on craigslist. I will be listing a car this Friday....

I sold a sub-$1500 car recently. I had it on both FB Marketplace and CL. I got way more response from FB but most of them weren’t serious. It finally sold through CL. $5 really isn’t that big a deal, IMO.

Dennis

Autotrader online.

It's $5.00 dollars people. Car sells for 5K and you only make $4995.00, which = end of the world to some I guess.

Last June I sold my Dakota on CL for 4200.00 to the first guy that called. Cost me a whopping 5.00, and I was happy to pay it. You won't find me on Facebook.

I see people asking that question of FB 10 minutes after the listing went up. I figure if someone isn't swift enough to figure that out I probably don't want any dealings with them, life's too short to deal with some people.

Seems like the $5 for craigslist is worth it to me, too. I've tried facebeook & hate it to the point where I'd probably want to deck Zuckerburg if I saw him somewhere.

The replies to an ad that you place on any website are sometimes pretty difficult to gauge whether it's a time waster or not. Even prior to the internet there were whackoloons, imbeciles & people with no money trying to come by. I do put in the descriptions of my ads that if the buyer wants to contact me to please mention the item specifically in their reply or it goes to the spam folder & then gets deleted. It helps cut back quite a bit, but nothing is perfect.

Last November I listed several large items on craigslist including a camping trailer. Of the 4 or 5 people who contacted me on the trailer, the person who actually showed up & inspected it, paid me full asking price. The first message they sent me I almost deleted because it was a half sentence, seemed vague & looked like a waste of my time. Before I had replied to them they sent a second message that was less vague so I took a chance. Glad I did because the other people that did appear to be serious were idiots offering half the price.

I've never sold anything on there. I got too fed up with the idiots that offer you a fraction of the price you want or give you every reason in the world why they really really need the car yet what they need it for isn't worth the sub 1,000 price I was asking.

Now you've got everyone going to facebook which I don't use, or as a buyer people are watching auctions and pickers and think everything they want to sell is worth something and have ridiculous prices.

I always put a disclaimer in my ads.

Something to the effect of :

If you see this ad it is still for sale
Low ballers, tire kickers, dreamers, bargain hunters, scammers please look elsewhere.

I get very few responses, but most are serious.

The $5 does not bother me to sell, but the number of cars listed has gone way down on the buying side... Just wondering where the sellers that did not want to pay the $5 went?

Offerup is pretty popular out here for selling cars. Its free and the scammers from Craigslist moved over so you will see the $1,500 2015 Jeeps mixed in with the real ads.

I've had much better luck selling stuff on facebook than craigslist. So many people who see it tag a friend who might want it, so it spreads fast.

i recently sold a pickup on facebook marketplace,i had it listed on craigs,had 2 spam replys,so long $5

I must've jinxed myself with my comment because I never had issues with FB Marketplace until my most recent ad. WOW! The amount of straight up crap and spam responses was overwhelming. And a majority of them were sent to me between 1 and 3 AM with the last one getting pissy with me that I didn't respond in a 'timely manner'.

I'll give it one more shot with a different item before I'm officially done.

No CL, no FB, where does someone go to post stuff (non-automotive) for sale?

Exactly. Geez. And listing it in auto parts instead is inconsiderate. Sorry, but it is, and annoying to people searching for auto parts.

The number of cars on CL dropped dramatically when they started chargin $5 bucks for it and the quality of cars went up as well as the multiple listings for the same cars went down. Used to be over 1200 at any given time on the local CL FSBO to now it hovers at or just below 300 and I get a lot more legit responses to my adds now people don't have to weed through the worthless crap. Facebook is a huge pain, yeah it's free (for now) but it is not organized in any way and mountains of people asking you "is this still available" that NEVER return your message saying yes it is.

Now if I could finger out how to sell more expensive cars like my 392 hemi ram 1500, no matter how good of a deal you offer cars over about $5000 get a lot harder to sell, Donald Trump could offer to sell me trump tower for $200,000, it would be a steal but I don't have it, same with cars over $5000, you offer a $30,000 car for $10,000 and nobody has $10,000 just laying around.

Not to mention being stupid on the part of the seller. Many buyers will only look in the cars for sale section, where the ad belongs, and not look in the parts for sale section, where it doesn't belong.

I sold a car last spring on FB. I had been taking the car to shows and kinda doing the word of mouth thing for a couple years....lots of talkers but no buyers. We got serious about selling it last year and went to CL. Saw the $5 and thought [censored]. Wife says let's put it on FB. Ok. We had a dozen responses in the 1st couple hours!! Sold it the next day to the 1st guy that responded ...for our price...in cash. Done!!