I’ve never sold a car before. Well, until selling my 2011 Nissan Xterra.
You see, I bought this truck with the intent of driving it forever. Our family was growing, we had a large dog, and we wanted to buy a pop up camper. After a lot of searching for potential vehicles I settled on the Nissan Xterra. It has plenty of get up and go with 265hp and can tow 5,000 pounds. That meant that we could easily tow a pop up camper and potentially move up to something a bit bigger if we wanted.
I had a plan for this. I wanted to buy a cheaper vehicle than I was used to; older with higher miles. I cruised the Craigslist postings for a while, along with a myriad of car websites and apps. We checked out one or two of them and they were just all too “well used”. I’ve always taken pride in a clean, well maintained vehicle. A vehicle is something we spend significant money on, so I try to take care of it. I also wanted to buy a truck and pop up camper combined for the amount of money we were getting from Volkswagen for buying back our “DieselGate” Sportwagen TDI.
During my internet searches I had driven past an Xterra at a local used car lot. It was more money than I wanted to spend. Plus, it was a nice but bold green color with aftermarket black wheels; not really my style. Eventually we decided to swing by and give it a look. It was in remarkable shape and was a base trim level. No frills on this one. Nissan seemed to actively push this trim level down by putting in last generation parts! We ended up driving it home a few hours later.
The truck served us extremely well. It towed our pop up camper home a few months later and on a couple of family vacations. One of these vacations included a sick baby and a skunked dog, but that’s a story for another time. It hauled humans, a dog, and a ton of stuff to and from my dad’s house in the Adirondack Mountains. It barreled through snow with aplomb.
The only service it ever needed was regular stuff like oil changes and filters – the brakes and tires had been done right before we bought it. The timing chain was replaced by the used lot we bought it from under their warranty. They were extremely helpful and willing to fix the problem, hence why they’re still our local mechanic.
BUT, our plans changed. We decided to buy a bigger RV than the Xterra could handle and live in it full time (soon). Sadly, the Xterra needed to go. The last vehicle I traded in was a Subaru Outback and I definitely left a significant amount of money out there by not selling it myself. So this time, we’d sell the Xterra ourselves. Here are the steps we took to get the best sale we could.
Note: None of this was done to get significantly more money, but rather to make a good (quick and reasonable) sale:
Clean it!!
I’ve always taken joy in cleaning my vehicles, something my dad instilled in me at a young age. So I rather liked this step. It was winter here in Pennsylvania when I was doing this, so I had temperatures to deal with. Had it been a warmer season I may have gone a little deeper in my cleaning regimen, but here’s what I did.
First, I washed it. Then, I washed it again. That second washing just makes sure you don’t miss any spots – particularly important when dealing with winter road grime. After it has been washed and dried thoroughly, I moved inside. Everything got wiped down. That included windows, dash, instrument cluster, console, cup holders (they get nasty), plastic pillars (in between front and back doors). For this, I like a product by Griot’s called Interior Detailer because it can be used almost everywhere, even glass and LCD screens. This is also a great time to go after your door jams, an often forgotten spot on a car. And of course, vacuum the hell out of it!
All of this cleaning might take one 2 or 3 hours, but selling a clean car is waaaay easier than selling a dirty one. It didn’t need any polish or wax to look good, so I skipped this step – again, winter.
Maintain it!
This one is hopefully something you’ve been doing all along. Maintaining a vehicle properly is obviously something you should do for reliability and safety. For the Xterra, I needed to tackle a cosmetic repair. Being a bit of a hypocrite, I let the bumper get awfully rusty. It started happening 2 winters ago and just kept getting worse. All it took was about an hour of work to remove the rust and old paint, tape off the back of the car, then spray a few coats of primer and paint. After that it looked like a million bucks!
This rather small amount of effort is probably what made me the most money. If I had tried to sell it with an ugly, rusty bumper I’d have had to drop the price way more than the $20 in materials and 1 hour of my time was worth. Also, putting off maintenance for the next owner will likely have potential buyers passing by your listing. Just keep the car in good working order.
Photograph it!
Good pictures sell. After fixing the bumper and detailing the vehicle, I took it to a nearby trailhead to take some photographs. The location was nice and fit the outdoorsy image a vehicle like an Xterra exudes. I took probably 75 photos – I later found out Craigslist only allows 24! I based my shots on what I’d seen good car lots doing. A few from each side, the dash with the mileage, the seats, the cargo area, the wheels & tires, and one “glamour shot”. I used our DSLR camera, but the camera on your phone is likely good enough to do the job.
Price it!
For some, coming up with a price is simple. Just look up your vehicle on a website like kbb.com and go. For others, with a more unique or desirable model, you’ll have to do a tad more work. Luckily, I fell into the first camp. Knowing the condition of my Xterra and the 3rd party value of it, I came up with the price I wanted for it. I then added around $500 to it. There you go, I had my list price. I ended up selling it for a bit less than my ideal price, but I cover that below.
Write it up!
I started with Craigslist. Our local Craigslist isn’t that great, especially when it comes to the vehicle listings. It is a lot of beat up, barely running, high mile junkers that are posted with 3 or 4 blurry or even worse nighttime, cell phone pictures. I expected my clean vehicle with quality photos to stand out. But I was also worried that it just didn’t fit the local market. I did a little extra digging by watching the listings for a bit as I was preparing to list mine. I did notice a number of nice cars come up for sale. Since I didn’t see them over and over, I assume they were snatched up by a buyer. If you’re not in a mad dash to get rid of the vehicle, try posting in other nearby Craigslists.
In my posting I included a little background of where, when, and why I bought the vehicle, the service records I had, and the reliability of the Xterra. I also mentioned that I was only selling it because we bought a bigger RV. Be prepared to field phone calls and emails about your vehicle. It should go without saying, but phone calls are going to come in.
Facebook Marketplace has become quite the competitor for Craigslist lately. People are already using Facebook, so hopping over to the marketplace section is easy. So, don’t forget about this when you’re selling your vehicle. I didn’t get this far in my process, more on that later.
After all that work, a few hours if I tallied it all up, I ended up selling my Xterra in 15 minutes. I posted it at noon on a Saturday and a fellow called me at 12:15pm and bought it. I was actually in the process of creating the Facebook Marketplace listing when he called. He was a car wholesaler looking to create inventory for his upcoming retail car lot. A few hours later one of his guys came to make sure the truck checked out. It did. He gave me money and then loaded it on his trailer.
A note on my sale price: I ended up selling it for a few hundred less than I had initially wanted. I rationalize that in two ways. 1) I may have let emotion overvalue the truck and 2) I sold it immediately. I could have held out for a different buyer and gotten $200 more, but at what cost? I would have had to field more phone calls and emails, update the listing, clean it up a few times before showing it, and deal with lowball tire-kickers to name a few things. I chose to be done with it quickly and take a small hit on the sale price.
I truly loved my Xterra. I was a bit sad to see it go, but our reasons for selling it were good. In the future, if I sell a vehicle again, I’ll follow the same process.
