FWIW, given the used car price surges recently, the other day, I decided to try getting quotes from Vroom, Shift and Carvana the other night for my blue '13 SV w/premium with 11 bars at under 68.5K miles. Shift and Vroom were way too low. One was $3201 and the other was $3700.
Carvana surprisingly offered me $5,140, good until June 1st (but I didn't sign in to create an account). Back in late 11/2020, I was offered $4262 by them, $4270 in 8/2020 and $4400 in ~late Feb 2019. I'm not sure if I answered their questions exactly the same. I hope this time,I answered the questions per their standard/what they'd expect.
My CA registration needs to be renewed by 6/24/2021 for $164. The car hits the 8 year mark that day. If I sell it after that, I would've kind wasted that $. If it's near expiration and I try to sell private party, someone might want to talk me down $164 since the tags are about to expire.
it is super tough for me to compare local and semi-local '13 Leafs for sale. I checked Craigslist, Autotrader, Cars.com and Facebook marketplace. The prices are all over the place. Many don't have capacity bars visible. Some are down a lot but some aren't. I can't command dealer prices and I see some nutty prices. As many of us know, the used Leaf market doesn't properly price battery condition and build month. And, (from what I've seen on Leaf FB groups) many buyers have no idea about capacity bars, build months, capacity loss, temp influencing degradation.
One FB marketplace listing points to a '13 SL (which it's not, it's an S) by Carvana at https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/4143606985698763/. Fortunately, the FB listing points to https://www.carvana.com/vehicle/1723309 which accurately lists it as an S. Carvana is crazy to be asking for almost $11K for an S trim w/10 bars!
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/3611623345588260 is an S trim with 8 bars that's listed for 18 weeks for $5,495. On FB marketplace's Carvana listings, I think I spotted a Leaf I saw on Craigslist before but I'm guessing its owner gave up and sold it Carvana.
I see https://sacramento.craigslist.org/cto/d/carmichael-2013-nissan-leaf/7322185042.html trying to sell a salvage title '13 SV w/premium for $6K??? Salvage asking for that much, really?
And w/any of these listings, who knows what they end up selling for vs. asking? Carvana's no haggle AFAIK, but to me, if it something doesn't sell, they have no choice but to keep cutting the price or send it to auction.
The last time I tried sending it out to my work's for sale email list was in July 2019 where I'd dropped the price to $6300 when its SOH was between 81 and 83% (now it's like ~79ish%). During the whole time, I got virtually no interest at my work despite our free L2 charging at work. At my work (which pays very well), seems like most of the new/new to the driver EVs are Teslas. We literally have hundreds of Teslas in our EV/PHEV registry.
If I sell it to Carvana, I bet they will mark it up big time and either they will get lucky or they will be stuck w/the car for a long time and forced to keep cutting prices until it sells. At least it won't be my problem.
I'm busy w/my day job but I'm thinking of getting the car washed, cleaning up the interior and trying my luck on FB marketplace, a local Leaf FB group and Craigslist this weekend. At least I'm fully vaxxed now and have N95 masks, as well.
If I get almost no interest, I may just dump to Carvana on Monday.
DarthPuppy said:
Any insights as to how much dealers are offering on trade? I would think the private market would be limited to very small subset of population - those who really researched these vehicles and have already gotten the LeafSpy setup so can confirm battery condition. A Nissan dealer would be able to have their service department give them a pretty quick assessment which I think would support this as a more desirable one. Other dealers like the VW one I'm getting my ID.4 from probably would be clueless.
I doubt it is worth anything, but I also have a postcard from local Nissan dealer saying they really need my 2013 Leaf due to the shortages. :roll: But of course, their assumption is that I would trade it in to them on a new purchase so I doubt they will give much value on an outright buy - especially since I'm switching to VW.
I'm trying to gauge how much difference I'm looking at between trade in vs private sale to see if I should attempt the private route.
In my experience, how much a dealer will give you for it depends on whether they think they can sell it and for how much + how much risk. If they don't want it, they will give you auction value. I've personally witnessed that with a friend who was wanting to get rid of a very old Accord when she bought a new Prius. The amount was crazy low.
I suggested she try selling her Honda to the Honda dealer next door. They offered her double what the Toyota dealer was offering, so she went w/that. There was no way she was going to do the private party route, likely due to time and personal safety.
I sold my former 350Z to a Nissan dealer. I actually got a surprisingly good price. Another Nissan dealer gave me a crap offer. The place I sold to, Stadium Nissan in Seattle went out of business later.
The guy told me part of the reason why they were giving me a good price is they believe they could sell it. And, (memory very foggy) because it was under a certain amount of $ so the buyer wouldn't need or could easily get financing... something like that.
https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=551302#p551302 and https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=552055#p552055 have pointers to my attempts in 2019 to sell my '13 Leaf SV w/premium to three Bay Area Nissan dealers. Essentially, all three didn't want it and told me to stick w/Carmax's offer of $5K back then. One of those dealers (Nissan Sunnyvale) is now out of business.
You can try taking it to Nissan dealers and selling to them. You don't have to buy anything. I'd sold my Z already when I made the suggestion to my Accord/Prius friend. Don't get your hopes up too high. You might try Carmax, but I just checked and they seem to have no Leafs for sale older than model year '15 now.