Selling A Used Car In Thailand

[Upcountry]

Well, like it or not, it's time to sell my good old car before I can no longer by 95 for it.

I'm thinking about selling options.

One is to ask my Thai brother-in-law to help me.

Another is to ask a local dealer to help me.

The shop the sold me the car several years ago said they'd help us sell it, but I wonder what percentage I they would want from the sale.

I'd also like to give my brother-in-law a percentage for his trouble and to motivate him to get as much as possible. But I don't know what a good percentage would be. BTW, I can trust him.

Any advice?

[coventry]

I tried to sell my car to a garage but they give you shit offers. I even had the garage bringing people around to my house to look at the car. Obviously they still got a kick back . I eventually sold it privately for what I wanted. I didn't advertise it but just spread by word of mouth.

[Upcountry]

I'm still trying to figure out what percentage of kickback the dealer would want.

I think I'll ask my brother-in-law to help, but I'm not sure what to give him to help me.

Maybe flat rate, plus a small extra percentage based bonus, to motivate him to get as much as possible.

The car is in great mechanical shape, with low mileage ( I replaced a lot of important parts such as front end and fuel system, etc.) but there are a couple of cosmetic issues - smudge on a car door that won't come off, scratch on lower part of front bumper, and scratch on the shade film of one window. It's small stuff but my sense is that Thai buyers are highly sensitive to the beauty/face of a car (it's a 'BM so all the more so) and may not be willing to listen to condition as an argument for higher price.

So, despite having invested a lot in this thing, I may still have to sell it for the lower end of the price. Of course, going with a lower price will make sell faster too.

Edited November 16, 2007 by Upcountry

[Upcountry]

Based on talking to people today, I get the sense that a consignment sale, involving the active efforts of the salesman would mean a 20% commission ( or cut into the final price of the car).

Sellers are telling me that there is at least a 100,000 Baht difference in price between a manual and automatic transmission for a BMW 3 series. Very surprising.

I checked out kelly blue book and Edmunds (US used car price organizations with websites) that don't give me a good comparison (mileage, etc., seems to get in the way).

Finally, I found a good chart on www.taladrod.com that shows a smaller difference between AT and MT. More like 40k baht.

I'm still not sure what to believe, because the local 'BM dealer gave me a price range that shows more like 100k difference. Maybe they used their wholesale reference.

Very confusing.

[torrenova]

I don't know about the garage % but the auto manual argument is quite easy. My auto box cost 40k more so if I was selling the car at 75% of its price (not current list but cost) then I would also expect the difference between a manual and auto to be 40,000 * 75% = 30,000.

Just go see what difference there currently is.

Of course, this is not an exact science as some cars are worth much less without an auto box but it should give some pointers.

[Upcountry]

Well, I have tried setting up ads on Thai car sale websites. It's been very frustrating.

First, I used www.thaicar.com, which has an English menu. You can actually place an ad in English, but not all the data you enter (such as location) may actually get into the database. When I tried to edit, I got only a Thai interface. I finally called them, and got some help. But I also got an explanation for why my car does not show up when I try to search for it:

The standard search only shows cars from dealers! annoyed.gif

I tried other methods of finding it after it disappeared off the recent additions menu, and it can't be found. So, Thaicar.com seems to be only for dealers. I don't know why they let me bother to enter an ad in the first place.

To advertise on other sites, I needed the help of a Thai reader. It is hard enough to do it that way, but these other sites have their own strange peculiarities which ring of a half-a$$ed, non-user-friendly attitude. In one case (one2car), we have to call to place the ad. In the case of taladrod.com the process of signing up for an account (again in Thai) ended up in a loop that frustrated us into giving up.

I'm getting the feeling, in any case, that advertising a car as a private seller is not well supported. We were able to to place an add with www.rotbarn.com.

Here's the summary:

www.thaicar.com - can place an add, but can't search for private cars

www.taladrod.com - tricky to set up account, password problems, gave up for now

www.one2car.com - have to call to set up an ad

www.rotbarn.com - add placed, in Thai. Not sure how to search, except by make.

If anyone has a suggestion for advertising on-line, I'd appreciate it. jap.gif