Value/sellability of hail damaged car.....(?)

OK,

So we went to see a Lyle Lovett Concert several weeks ago. During dinner, we got a typical Denver hailstorm: 3 minutes of golf ball size hail, and torrential rain. Then the sun came out. (Oh yeah, the concert was EXCELLENT.)

We did not notice the damage until a week ago.

Car is a 2005 Element with 93k miles. Red, AWD, in very good condition other than the hail damage.

Edmunds and KBB say the Unhailed car is worth 5 to 7K$ for private party sale and 4 to 5k$ for Trade-in.

USAA is paying us 3k for the repairs.

Has anyone else had this problem? How did you address the problem?

TIA

Rog

Are you keeping it or looking to sell? If keeping it, does the damage really bother you? I'm guessing no, since it took you several weeks to notice.

If you're keeping it, take the money, don't fix it and drive the wheels off it for another 100k. If you're looking to sell, I'd expect to knock 500-1000 off the normal selling price, depending on the extent of the damage. I would not put 3k in repairs into a 5-7k car.

What tgmf said is what we did. The damage is only noticeable from certain angles in bright light. We pocketed the check and don't regret it.

I got caught in that same hail storm. $11k worth of damage to my car.

Hail damage will severely impact the resale of that car. $500-1000 is crack pipe money, all of us out here know the amount of $$ it costs to fix the car and you'll be lucky to sell it for half its current value.

Which is fine if your plan is to essentially pocket the other half that USAA is giving you. Otherwise get it fixed and enjoy it.

If it took you a few days to notice it, buyers might not see it either. Pocket the dough, wait for the flurry at the paintless dent repair shop to settle down, offer cash.

Its an 11 year old element. Keep the cash, drive it forever.

Keep it. Have you seen the Element Hack?!

Element Hack at the bottom of this VW page

Video

My 2015 Challenge Infiniti Q45 was a Denver hail damage car. The previous owner got $5k from State Farm and forfeited the car. I bought it at insurance auction for $900!
The hail damage is noticeable if you look for it but it does not show up in photos.

Wife's 2000 LeSabre got caught in hailstorms twice. Not big stuff but lots of tiny dents visible in the right light. Collected from the insurance company both time and never had it fixed. Drove it another 6 years after the second time. When she traded it in on her 2013 Legacy the damage was never even mentioned.

Potential buyers shopping $5,000 cars care about mechanical condition, maintenance history, rust and then a distant 4th, cosmetics.

Personally buying a hail damaged car wouldn't bother me much if the rest of the car was ideal. If I was in the market for a 5-6k car and found one that was flawless but with your described level of damage for 4k I'd be happy. If this was a new M3 or something, then yeah, hail damage is going to kill resale....but it isnt.

In my opinion,(again at this price range) cutting the value in half is crackpipe.

My 2005 Grand Prix GTP Compg got big damage from a hail storm in Knoxville. USAA cut us a check but by the time it was processed the body shops were scheduling almost a year out.

Every. Single. One.

The Hyundai dealer offered us $2K more than I was expecting as a trade in for the wife's new Elantra, hail damage and all.

Hal said:

Wife's 2000 LeSabre got caught in hailstorms twice. Not big stuff but lots of tiny dents visible in the right light. Collected from the insurance company both time and never had it fixed. Drove it another 6 years after the second time. When she traded it in on her 2013 Legacy the damage was never even mentioned.

I would have thought the insurance company would have put the "fix" on the Carfax ....

Old thread from 2016 that got revived by spam. 

But, before I realized it was an old thread I saw this sentence:

Car is a 2005 Element with 93k miles. Red, AWD, in very good condition other than the hail damage.  Edmunds and KBB say the Unhailed car is worth 5 to 7K$ for private party sale and 4 to 5k$ for Trade-in 

 My thought was, "$6k-ish seems cheap for a 93k Honda Element in this new climate."  It was then that I realized this thread is 5 years old.  

$13,900 sample

$14,900 sample

mndsm said:

Its an 11 year old element. Keep the cash, drive it forever.

Plus Element drivers & fans are a bit of a cult, so someone will want an AWD Element regardless of the damage, especially if the rest of the vehicle's condition is better than most others. 

In reply to boulder_dweeb :

Paint less dent repair. Shop for best price.  Quotes from $50 per dent to $2300 

I bought a slightly hail damaged Cayman S at substantially below market value, enjoyed the hell out of it for five or six years and when I traded it in at a Mercedes dealership, they deducted $1000 from a very fair trade in value for hail damage. 
 

It never bothered me and I'd do it all over again. 

can most hail damage be fixed by the average Pain less dent repair guy ?

are there any Youtube  videos that tell some  of the Painless dent repair  secrets ?

I know the really good guys  can name their price for the exotic car market.

PS:  we really do  not have much hail in the Los Angeles area , so I never saw the damage from golf ball size hail damage . 

In reply to californiamilleghia :

There are PDR guys that make a good living chasing hail all over the country. Usually they come into town after a storm and make bulk deals with car dealerships to fix everything on the lot. 

californiamilleghia said:

I never saw the damage from golf ball size hail damage . 

 

We had a hail storm here in Fort Worth Texas back in the mid 90s that totaled a lot of cars.....

...CARS...THAT...WERE...INSIDE...LOCKED...GARAGES...

Yes, the hail went through the roofs of the houses, through the ceilings, and totaled the cars. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Mayfest_Storm

2 Billion dollars worth of damage and 13 people killed.

Texas is one of the worst states for hail. If I lived there I'd buy a hail car and never bother uprgrading, it happens so often.

The only potential downside to not fixing it is, should it wind up being totaled in another loss, the insurance co can deduct the entire amount of your hail claim because you didn't fix it.

Depends on where you got the hail damage.  Here in Colorado there are plenty of hail storms that even the most magician of a PDR guy can't touch.  Nothing but replacing the body panels and painting the car will fix it.  At that point, I'd want nothing to do with the car. 

My old silver E36 M3 I got hail damaged but I knew the PDR guy could fix it all.  Charged me $1500-2000 (this was awhile ago, I'd expect it to be quite a bit more now) to fix the car.  That was a bit of a gamble for me but I've unfortunately had several of my cars hail damaged and had a decent idea of what could be fixed with PDR and what couldn't...

I am unclear so I am asking. Could you get a wrap to cover the car?  Or would the material just be too thin to cover it up?

Anything under the wrap will be visible.  If you wrap a golf ball, all the dimples in the golf ball are visible through the wrap, same thing with a hail damaged car.

Old thread but yeah, TGMF was totally right. All I buy are sub $5k cars. I'm happy if they shift into reverse. By the time a car like this is sold a couple years later, I wouldn't take the hits into account, nor pay any attention to a buyer that tried.

In reply to docwyte :

Thanks I was always wondering about that.