I'm looking to trade in my 03 GMC, Its worth less than I owe. It has 15,000 miles on it and I havn't even shopped around yet to see what some dealers would do to get me out of it. About -5000
I would like to wipe the slate clean.
Any comments?

 

Trading in a relatively new vehicle is always going to be a bad move especially if you didn't put much down and new vehicles aren't worth what you pay for them anymore.

The only up side is there are still some nice discounts from GM on new vehicles so that will help.

Why do you want to get rid of it and what are you looking to get?

 

Trade-in's suck!!!!! Best bet is to sell it yourself. I have had good luck with Carmax. I have sold 2 vehicles to them for within $500 of what I owed. The last one was an 02 Explorer that was new in 01, 33 months old with 36k on the clock. They gave us $14,300 and we owed $14,820 just 3 months ago.

 

Greg - How did what they gave you compare to what the Blue Book(edmunds, kbb, etc.) value was?

Oh, and get back to work.

 

Very close to retail value. I didn't pay to much attention to it though. The object was to break even. Actually we came out better. We saved $175 a month for 4 months and the $250 disposal fee on the lease/option. So actually, we came out $275 ahead and since we bought from them also, we didn't have to pay tax on the first 14k of the new car. But you don't have to buy from them to sell to them. We sold a Dodge Shadow to them in 1998.

 

I would never trade in a vehicle. Try selling it on your own.

 

I've heard from multiple people now that CarMax gives very close to what you can get selling it privately. I think they can do this with certain vehicles because it's nothing for them to ship the cars anywhere in the country where they're more in demand.

They have the network setup so it just cost them shipping and they probably have contracts with shipping companies for cheap because of volume.

 

They try to keep them semi local. But if I found on in Florida I liked, they would ship it to Houston and add the cost to the price. Usually about $500 +/- depending on where it is going. But if you back out, they get you for the shipping cost anyway. They have you sign something that hooks you for the shipping wheather you buy or not.

 

I'll give carmax a shot,
Thanks,