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Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

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Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#51

Post by joshmlewis »

yid wrote: post #37
exue wrote: post #26

Great service! A lot of people don't have experience or simply don't want to deal with the Craigslist experience. Putting another option between a private party sale and the dealer is great. Questions that immediately come to mind - how do you handle negotiations, and how do buyers pay? How do you pay the seller afterward? (cash, verifying a cashier's check - other comments point out the common scams etc.) (Or is Ins…

> Also, how do you filter out non-serious buyers, especially for performance vehicles I cannot emphasize the importance of this. I have a 2005 Lotus Elise that I would love to part with, but I'm really, really nervous about an inexperienced driver blowing the clutch or just coming over for a joyride.

I have had a lot of sports cars and test driven a good number as well. A lot of owners are like you and some wouldn't even let me drive the car, I had to sit in the passengers seat while they did everything. I could ask to do certain things like if they would brake check or accelerate, but that was the limit.

What I would propose is letting people ride with a trust local mechanic with the mechanic driving. That way they can make sure a professional is driving the car, can pick up on any issues, and can be honest with the potential buyer.

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#53

Post by ssharp »

joshmlewis wrote: post #45

I've bought and sold a lot of cars the past few years. I have never once considered a dealer trade in offer. I've had relatively easy and good luck with selling my car online through Craigslist and Autotrader which I imagine is what they will probably do to unload the cars. I like the idea of the service but I'm wondering what the difference is between dealer trade in pricing and market pricing. Even if I have to sac…

You can generally post on Craiglist and get offers within a day that beat a trade-in offer. People sit on car listings and offer low-ball prices that are still above how awful dealer trade-in offers are.

I don't think selling a car is really that difficult of a process, for me anyway. I don't know what California paperwork is like, but in Ohio, all you need to do is sign your title over in front of a notary. Besides that, it's just a matter of listing it on Craiglist and scheduling times to look at it.

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#54

Post by ValG »

joshmlewis wrote: post #45

I've bought and sold a lot of cars the past few years. I have never once considered a dealer trade in offer. I've had relatively easy and good luck with selling my car online through Craigslist and Autotrader which I imagine is what they will probably do to unload the cars. I like the idea of the service but I'm wondering what the difference is between dealer trade in pricing and market pricing. Even if I have to sac…

Great questions Josh,

Dealer trade-in pricing generally uses a standard called "black book". They base the pricing on the type of car the the condition of the vehilce. The discount of retail to black book varies, but can be huge (4k+). When dealers buy a car off trade-in, they have to price in the fact that they have a lot of overhead to get the car sold. Dealers also price risk into the car value, if it's not a desirable car, they will sell it at auction. They have to make sure they stay under the auction value.

Individual buyers don't have that. That spread is pretty large and we can take advantage of that.

The paperwork is actually pretty straight forward if you have a notary public available (we do). We can pull up all the paperwork necessary and generally get it done at each persons convenience. The biggest issue is actually trust between the parties and us. That's what we have to work on.

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#55

Post by primitivesuave »

ValG wrote: post #2

Hi Guys, Val here from InstaMotor. We’re trying to be to car dealerships what airbnb is to the hotel industry. We’d love to get some additional feedback on the service. Any feedback provided is super beneficial. We’re specifically looking for some feedback on: 1. When you get to the site, within the first 30 seconds, do you understand what we do. Why or why not? 2. If you do understand what we do, would you ever use…

This is a very clean and straightforward website - no BS to wade through, no popups asking for my email, just straightforward here's-how-you-do-it. If I had seen this a couple months ago I would have definitely saved a couple thousand bucks.

One thing that's really inspiring about this is that it has the potential to completely change the concept of used car sales. Just like how realtors take you around to go see houses that are for sale, a car salesman can become a person who takes you around to test drive cars for sale.

I might be wrong about your target market, but it seems like it is currently a market of wealthy individuals with high-valued cars to sell but no time to sell them. However, the quickest sales are the ones for lower valued cars - way back when I only had four figures in the bank, my only requirement for my used car was that it not make weird noises.

One lucrative direction you could go with this in the future is adding financing options, so someone could lease a used car from you and you could pass a percentage of the monthly car payments on to the car owner. Or, you could buy the car from the owner and lease it out to potential owners. I have no idea what the legal requirements are to be able to do this, but if it works you'd have a pretty stable source of recurring income.

Overall it's a great idea, I wish you the best of luck with this!

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#56

Post by ValG »

kfd1 wrote: post #22

Love the idea. This tackles a real pain point for many sellers. Good website. I like! What are the challenges of expanding to different locations?

Markets are pretty different across the US. Car buying/selling is local process. People tend to be willing to go roughly 50 miles to see a car if they're really serious about purchasing it. There are also differences in paperwork and requirements for selling a car, and how the market is made up. For example, from my experience, people in the midwest tend to finance their vehicles much more frequently than people on the west coast. It's not a huge deal, but does add additional wrinkles in the process.

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#58

Post by Sovietaced »

ValG wrote: post #46
exue wrote: post #26

Great service! A lot of people don't have experience or simply don't want to deal with the Craigslist experience. Putting another option between a private party sale and the dealer is great. Questions that immediately come to mind - how do you handle negotiations, and how do buyers pay? How do you pay the seller afterward? (cash, verifying a cashier's check - other comments point out the common scams etc.) (Or is Ins…

All of these are excellent questions. I'll tackle them 1 by 1 (the is to say, we're still working through some of these items, this is just our current methods). 1. How do we handle negotiations: We talk to you, the seller and work to find a fair market price for the car. We have dealership level tools available for this. We come to an agreement on the minimum price you'd take. From there, we negotiate with the poten…

3. That is awesome! Love that you guys understand enthusiast cars.

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#59

Post by ValG »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #24

Definitely a cool idea. Where's the buying side, though? Do you guys just list on craigslist?

Not just Craigslist, but we go through a lot of traditional channels (autotrader, cars.com). Selling a car is a marketing game, especially if you want to maximize your outcome. For certain types of cars, we also list them on specific forums (e.g. Porsches would get listed on Porsche enthusiast websites etc...)

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#60

Post by mathgeek »

ValG wrote: post #36
chadwickthebold wrote: post #28

One point - take a look at the copy on your pricing slider. 'You Earn' makes it sound like that's all I'm going to get out of this deal. It took me a second to realize it was the difference between the dealership and instamotor.

Hey Chad, Thanks for the note. Yeah you're right. We'll make the update to clarify that. We had it as "saved" before, but that didn't seem to make sense. Still trying to find the right wording, but we'll update it today or over the weekend most likely. Thank you!

Could always slap a "more" after the value.
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