John Welsh
John Welsh Mod Squad
12/11/18 9:34 a.m.

I decided to put this in the Classifieds rather then build thread since the intention here is to sell this one.  

Just about 1 hour ago I had the winning bid on this '06 Pontiac Vibe 97k miles with auto trans.  It has a bump in the rear quarter which resulted in an insurance claim.  State Farm claims the car has a Pre-accident ACV Actual cash value of $4,541.   Rather than spend to fix the car, State Farm paid the owner and then State Farm sent the car off to auction where I bought it.  

I had in a max pre-bid of $1,675.  This price is the absolute maximum I was willing to pay.  The pre-bidding ended at $1,500.  When the bidding when live someone else bid the car up to $1,650 and that was trumped by my $1,675 and it took everything I wanted to spend but I got it.  With fees included I will need a check for $2,223 to buy the car.  After that I will have to pay Ohio Sales Tax (since not a dealer) of 6.75%.  From there is wil have to be state inspected for $53.50.  Add in some title and tag charges and I will have roughly $2,500 into the whole car.  

I hope to sell it for $3,500.  

State Farm gave the car a market value of $4,500.  Saving $1k for a dent and a scratch (in plastic) seems like a good deal.  That will make me $1k but for that $1k I will have at least 8 hours invested into the transaction:

  • 2 hours to shop/inspect
  • 2 hours to pick-up
  • 1 hour in registration/title/pre-inspection
  • 3 hours to travel back/forth to inspection site 

The car hails from Sylvania, OH (suburb of Toledo.)  I deduced this from the keychain the car had which listed a auto repair shop in Sylvania.  Toledo is much better than Cleveland and specifically the East side of Cleveland where they get a whole lot more snow and use a whole lot more road salt.  

I might pick up the car later today or tomorrow.  

Here is what I know so far:  

 

 

 

John Welsh
John Welsh Mod Squad
12/11/18 8:39 p.m.

Picked it up at the end of the day. 

John Welsh
John Welsh Mod Squad
12/22/18 9:58 a.m.

This ended up being a very nice car.  

I picked it up on Tues, Dec 11th.  We had good weather/sunny skys on Thurs Dec 13th so I took some quality pictures and on Friday Dec 14th I got the Craigslist ad up.  I figured I didn't want to miss a chance at a weekend worth of lookers.  Due to December and dark by 4:30 I figured it would be hard for working people to see the car in the daylight during the week.  

That first weekend brought one text and email conversation from one shopper.  

On Tues Dec 18th (one week after buying the car) was my appointment with the State to get the car Salvage to Rebuilt inspected.  This inspection was a super simple and super short since zero repairs and zero receipts needed.  Now the car was really ready to sell.  

The following day I entered into a text conversation with another potential buyer.  On Friday Dec 21st, after work, in the dark-ish he saw the car for the first time.  Today, Saturday Dec 22 at 10:00 he paid me $3,300.   Sold to the first person who looked at it. 

Win-win.  I accepted $200 less than my target of $3,500 but also offloaded the car in 11 days after buying it and only 4 days after the titling was all done and I was really able to sell the car. 

8 hours of effort...$800 profit.  I'm good with that!  

Real Benjamins:

 

 

 

 

 

My most recent purchase is a 2004 Chevy Malibu that is detailed over in this thread.

chandler
chandler PowerDork
12/22/18 11:34 a.m.

Noice.

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