I need specific, current help on car value in Philly area

Ok, so I need help from folks up in PA, as I am in FL and apparently things are different up there. My son just relocated to Philadelphia and is looking to get a newer vehicle. The dealers have offered him squat but so have the salvage yards apparently and I am trying to find out if they are being cheap or if his car truly has such little value. It is a 2002 Honda Accord with about 128K miles. Mechanically, it is in nearly perfect condition. All the power windows and doors work great. The only issue is the passenger door has been hit and dented enough to need repair although not smashed to bits. Window and such are still intact, etc..

The thing is, the dealer offered him $250 on an $18,000 purchase (might stretch it to $500 if he is willing to sign today kind of thing), and the salvage yard he called only offered hid $150. Neither of is are expecting thousands for the car because of the cosmetic damage but still, the engine alone should be worth well more than these offers. My son is not in a position to part the car out himself, so that is out. He needs to move the car as a whole unit. He has clean title and has owned the car for 3 or 4 years so we know the history.

So the question is, would you take the dealer's offer or do you think he can do considerably better (at least a grand) selling it privately? I do not know the car market and know even less about life in Philly (except that the hills and alley sized roads are nuts...) so any insight would be welcomed.

In my area that would bring about 2500 all day long.

I would think that a good runner and driver with clear title should bring over a grand or more easy enough as after the turn in clunkers programs and all the vehicle scrapping over the last few years it is VERY tough to find anything worth driving for less then 2 grand with good rubber and such.

Never take a dealers offer. Sell privately.

If they are discounting, they will discount with or without a trade in!

If it's just the door have him replace it from a pick and pull , replace it or include it in the private sale . Any running car should fetch twice the dealers offer if not more . Hondas apparently have great resale value from what I hear . Has he ran a Kelly blue book figure ?

I concur with all the gents above. Have him make the deal on the new vehicle, sell the Honda on CL.. It'll be gone in a few days for FAR more than dealer's offering!

probably a $1000 car in upstate NY

Sell it!

1000 to 1500 here, I concur about throwing on another door, Heck , I paid 1200 for a 99 Taurus with 189,000+ miles about 5 years ago. You have to look long and hard to find anything under a grand.

Tell the Dealer you want more! Make him work for the sale, that way you don't have to deal with selling the old one... “Nickel holding up a dollar.”

If it is as mechanically sound as you say it is, why doesn't he just keep driving it? Car payments suck! Worst possible "investment" you can make. All vehicles do is depreciate. 128k on a rice burner is nothing. I'm working on 250k on my Toyota.

Just my opinion. Times are tough and they are only going to get tougher.

First, thanks for the replies.

Perhaps I should add a few things about my son. My first advice was to keep the car as well. Only thing is, PA has inspections which FL does not. He is concerned about having to spend for repairs when he is intending to replace it shortly anyway (starting a new job was the reason for his move and apparently appearances matter).

As for doing any repair work himself, I am afraid he does not know the difference between a hammer and a screwdriver. Well, actually that is not fair. He does know that but what he does not know if the difference between a slotted screwdriver and a Philips, forget about torx... This is my fault. As my kids were growing I intentionally excluded them from my work (I am a residential contractor) because I wanted them to go to school and find a better direction. It worked, maybe too well...

Finally, he is typical of most 20 something kids in that patience and common sense are not really in his vocabulary. I mean, he understands them and knows what they are but he just does not have time to worry about such things...

I walked him through talking to the dealer and standing firm and such and he did ok with that but they will not budge. This is why I am looking for specific information for the area he is in rather than general information for everywhere. I have already given him all that and I know what I would do here but, while I assume that Philly is similar to other places, sometimes things are not as they appear. So I am appealing to folks in the area for guidance. My advice to him was to buy the car without the trade and sell the car privately. This is also something he would prefer to avoid but $500 for the car is just stupid. If the dealer would offer him $1000 he would take it just to avoid the hassle of selling it.

Anyway, thanks again and if anyone here is in the Philly area and can offer specific pricing information on similar cars in that area, or the name of an honest parts dealer that might be interested, I would still covet your input.

I understand......In Nashville two hours away they have yearly emissions testing.......Here in Knoxville we do not........100's of cars on the road here would not be in Nashville due to the costly repairs it sometimes takes just to pass emissions.......When I had my salvage company in Nashville we had one truck that worked great but every year we had to drop $300 to $500 to get it to pass........The engine light would stay off for a month or two then right back on it came and would run fine the rest of the year.........GO FIGURE

Well Harold, sorry I can't give you any PA specific info.

I think I can shed a little light on the situation, since my wife sells cars here in SD.

By the way, I told her 02 Honda Civic with 128k and a dent in the door and she said " any dealer can give you $1000 for that, unless the interior is trashed" proof of the timing belt being replaced would be a plus too.

From my experience, the markup on used vehicles is insane. Being my wife sells cars, (and very well I might add) we get "employee pricing" on any vehicles traded in to her dealership. Usually this is $500-1000 over what the dealership has into the vehicle.

I've bought 2 pickups this way. My 1ton was priced at $16k, I got it for $11k. Mind you, that was $1000 over what they had into it.

Did the same with my 3/4 ton Chevy.

I can't even tell you how many times she comes home and says I made $2000 on one sale today!

What I'm trying to get at is that dealership will give you $250 for yours, and sell it for $2500!!!

I keep forgetting about the inspection problems that busy places have as I haven't had to deal with it as of yet. knock on metal,lol...

The car will be worth far more in a area that don't have the emissions and inspection problems as of yet.

If the dealer will allow him the 1000.00 in trade then that seems what your son would be comfortable with.

Seems the other option is to find a way to sell it to someone in a different area that will come and get it at a fair value and not eat your son for dinner.

You will have to excuse that last bit if it offends any as I have been watching and listening to the Silence of the Lambs series with Anthony Hopkins. I have Red Dragon in now. I have watched them all before. The movie media I have been watching lately is from stuff I picked up in the last month. I don't mind hauling VHS and older DVD movies home for free or very cheap if there is some good condition worth holding on to movies. I do enjoy my media collection as I don't watch ANY current programmed media. Don't listen to radio or read current magazines or news papers. It doesn't interest me as I prefer my news and information by the grapevine and what happens to find me. I do o.k. living mostly in the past as that is where I'm comfortable.

sorry for the Hijack if intruding or annoying in some way, form or fashion.

So who wants to take a trip to Philly and buy a car that sounds like a nice enough car for reliable transportation away from the busy cities.

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Originally Posted by pjost

Well Harold, sorry I can't give you any PA specific info.

I think I can shed a little light on the situation, since my wife sells cars here in SD.

By the way, I told her 02 Honda Civic with 128k and a dent in the door and she said " any dealer can give you $1000 for that, unless the interior is trashed" proof of the timing belt being replaced would be a plus too.

From my experience, the markup on used vehicles is insane. Being my wife sells cars, (and very well I might add) we get "employee pricing" on any vehicles traded in to her dealership. Usually this is $500-1000 over what the dealership has into the vehicle.

I've bought 2 pickups this way. My 1ton was priced at $16k, I got it for $11k. Mind you, that was $1000 over what they had into it.

Did the same with my 3/4 ton Chevy.

I can't even tell you how many times she comes home and says I made $2000 on one sale today!

What I'm trying to get at is that dealership will give you $250 for yours, and sell it for $2500!!!

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Good information but information we already have. I also have family in car sales. The interior is nice for its age. Not perfect but not even close to trashed. He does not drive much and takes care of his stuff. The car will need repairs to the exterior and a repaint and then it would indeed be saleable for 4K easy, maybe more. The timing belt was replaced at 80 some thousand miles by the previous owner. We found his name in the car and called his local dealership who verified the car was serviced that and gave me some history. Unfortunately we have no documentation of that. He isnot interested in getting greedy or rich on the car, just wants a fair shake. He got a good price when he bought it and has gotten his use out of it.

Age & condition might be the determining factor. It depends on the dealership, but some automatically wholesale out anything over ten years. ( That one is 13 - 14 years old. )

I know you can run em' longer because i do it all the time ... but ... figure end of life for a car as being fifteen years old. End of life for a pickup at 20 years.

This is especially so in the states that have motor vehicle inspections. Here in Maine the average daily driver that's been on the road for ten years will have trouble passing because the regulations are so strict.

I guess what it all comes down to is that a vehicle that won't pass state inspection & is near end of life really has no practical value.

The bureaucrats that write the motor vehicle inspection regulations have nice comfortable government jobs & a decent standard of living. They don't stop to consider that somebody who works for a living might not be able to afford a 13,000 $ used car that would meet their minimum standard. Frankly ... most probably don't even care.Their only concern is to keep improving the safety & environmental standard.

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Originally Posted by Scrappah

Age & condition might be the determining factor. It depends on the dealership, but some automatically wholesale out anything over ten years. ( That one is 13 - 14 years old. )

I know you can run em' longer because i do it all the time ... but ... figure end of life for a car as being fifteen years old. End of life for a pickup at 20 years.

This is especially so in the states that have motor vehicle inspections. Here in Maine the average daily driver that's been on the road for ten years will have trouble passing because the regulations are so strict.

I guess what it all comes down to is that a vehicle that won't pass state inspection & is near end of life really has no practical value.

The bureaucrats that write the motor vehicle inspection regulations have nice comfortable government jobs & a decent standard of living. They don't stop to consider that somebody who works for a living might not be able to afford a 13,000 $ used car that would meet their minimum standard. Frankly ... most probably don't even care.Their only concern is to keep improving the safety & environmental standard.

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That was a problem I had when searching for a car for my wife........WE had 10,000 CASH in hand and at most dealerships they didn't even have anything in that price range.....The newer car dealers told me anything over 100,000 miles that they took trade on went straight to auction......We ended up at a BUY HERE PAY HERE TYPE PLACE and I feel I negotiated a decent deal........I prefer to support AMERICAN MADE but after so many Pieces of JUNK plus my wife being hard on vehicles I bought a HONDA.......OH well best of luck to everyone involved and hope everything works out!!!

That's at least a 1000dollar car here in Nevada. (I know that info doesn't help at all) but I have an idea..... show your son this thread, show him that more than just dad have the same thought , maybe he'll understand . Just a thought

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Originally Posted by Scrappah

The bureaucrats that write the motor vehicle inspection regulations have nice comfortable government jobs & a decent standard of living. They don't stop to consider that somebody who works for a living might not be able to afford a 13,000 $ used car that would meet their minimum standard. Frankly ... most probably don't even care.Their only concern is to keep improving the safety & environmental standard.

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This is the truth. A safety inspection makes sense to me but all the eco stuff they require in some places are ridiculous. I paid $5K for my current truck. No way I can afford to pay twice that in cash and I do not want payments...

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Originally Posted by mikeinreco

That was a problem I had when searching for a car for my wife........WE had 10,000 CASH in hand and at most dealerships they didn't even have anything in that price range.....The newer car dealers told me anything over 100,000 miles that they took trade on went straight to auction......We ended up at a BUY HERE PAY HERE TYPE PLACE and I feel I negotiated a decent deal........I prefer to support AMERICAN MADE but after so many Pieces of JUNK plus my wife being hard on vehicles I bought a HONDA.......OH well best of luck to everyone involved and hope everything works out!!!

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Buying American has unfortunately become a myth. Even if assembled here, most of the car is still made overseas. Plus many foreign cars (Honda and Toyota) have assembly plants here. I buy what is good and will last. I prefer Ford trucks but when it comes to cars, Japanese are my first choice.

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Originally Posted by harsas

This is the truth. A safety inspection makes sense to me but all the eco stuff they require in some places are ridiculous. I paid $5K for my current truck. No way I can afford to pay twice that in cash and I do not want payments...

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It's a toughie. It's become a real problem to buy an affordable car or truck here. It used to be that i would figure on spending 800.00 - 1,200.00 $ on a vehicle and then sink another grand in parts into it. For a budget of 2,200.00 $ you would have something fairly decent that you could expect to get 5 years use out of.

Nowadays it's pretty hard to find anything that will pass for an inspection without taking out a bank loan.

On the one hand the price of everything has gone up so you have to expect to pay more but the biggest problem as i see it is state government gone a bit too far with all of the new safety regulations. Take something as simple as a brake line for instance: If it's showing ANY rust the line has to be replaced because there's no way to accurately predict when it will fail. If one line is bad chances are that they're all bad and that's easily 600.00 $ at your local repair shop. It's great for the mechanics because they know they've got you by the nads. If you don't spend the money they take a swipe through your inspection sticker with a razor knife to invalidate it and you can't legally drive it off their property.

See .... what started out as a basically good idea ( a safety inspection ) went very wrong over time.

I probably spent a couple of years reaching out to the Governor's office, the State legislature, and the state bureau that writes the regulations without any success. In the end, everyone agreed that this thing had grown to a point where it was becoming a real problem but they couldn't agree on a solution so nothing got done. Once these laws are written it's nearly impossible to get them off the books.

The only solution is never to plant that seed because once it takes hold it will grow out of control.

Lucky you ..... you live in Florida ! :)

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Originally Posted by Scrappah

<snip> On the one hand the price of everything has gone up so you have to expect to pay more but the biggest problem as i see it is state government gone a bit too far with all of the new safety regulations. Take something as simple as a brake line for instance: If it's showing ANY rust the line has to be replaced because there's no way to accurately predict when it will fail. If one line is bad chances are that they're all bad and that's easily 600.00 $ at your local repair shop. It's great for the mechanics because they know they've got you by the nads. If you don't spend the money they take a swipe through your inspection sticker with a razor knife to invalidate it and you can't legally drive it off their property.

See .... what started out as a basically good idea ( a safety inspection ) went very wrong over time.

I probably spent a couple of years reaching out to the Governor's office, the State legislature, and the state bureau that writes the regulations without any success. In the end, everyone agreed that this thing had grown to a point where it was becoming a real problem but they couldn't agree on a solution so nothing got done. Once these laws are written it's nearly impossible to get them off the books.

The only solution is never to plant that seed because once it takes hold it will grow out of control.

Lucky you ..... you live in Florida ! :)

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I hear you. I grew up in NY and inspections were done at the local service station. You knew they were going to find something because the $3 we paid for an inspection (then) didn't even cover their time. If you were smart you would develop a relationship with a shop by having them do some work for you so they had an investment in you as a customer to protect. It was the only way to survive an inspection. And that was in the 70's.

When I first moved to FL there were inspections but they were done in state run inspection stations. They had no incentive to find a problem. In fact, their incentive was to get you out quickly so unless you had a hole in your muffler of bad lights, you were in easy street. They shut the whole thing down at the end of the 70's IIRC.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. I went through the inspection manual for this state to see if i could figure out a way of unraveling this mess. If one were to make up a checklist there would probably be at least sixty things that need to be checked over before passing a vehicle for inspection.

The worst part is that if you are going to run an inspection program every one of those items is necessary. Anything less ... some lawyer out there will sue the state because their client was hurt in a vehicle that passed inspection. ( This happened here and the wrongful death settlement was large. )

There's really no middle way of moderation to keep things from getting out of hand. It's either all in, or , completely out of the motor vehicle inspection business.

The big thing is the underneath. An older car might look great and drive fine but that's misleading. You don't see it for what it really is until you put it up on a lift and go through the checklist.

Most of the time it would cost more to fix than it's worth. :-l

i live in philly and my wife has the same car....a dealer wont give you anything...that car is worth more than that...buy the new car if you want and sooner or later you'll find somebody to sell to..a friend of a friend...somebody elses son whatever....craiglist be carefull..its a big city...he will probably like it..a lot going on...i.if you buy a new car the dealer would give you half price the next day on same car...its used!