In this week’s Goss’ Car Buying Tips video, Goss instructs you on how to get the best value out of the car you want to trade-in. When taking a car to be traded in, it is important to make sure it looks clean and presentable inside and out. However, as Goss notes in his video, it is a common misconception to think making repairs and replacing parts on your vehicle will ensure a better deal on a trade-in.

To find out the do’s and don’ts regarding prepping your car for a trade-in, watch Goss’s video.

After you purchase your vehicle, don’t forget to protect your car with an extended auto warranty from CARCHEX. Stay tuned for more videos in this series!

How to Get the Best Value from a Trade-In

To get the best value on your trade-in, number one, it has to look good, so you want to spend your effort, your time, on your used car making it look good. Don’t take it in full of fast food wrappers and all filthy and dirty and so on. That is automatically going to push the price down, sometimes significantly. So make sure that it looks good.

Don’t spend a lot of money on repairs that aren’t absolutely necessary. A lot of people get the notion that if they rebuild their used car, and then take it and trade it, that the dealer is going to give them a lot more money for it because it has new breaks as opposed to serviceable breaks, or that it has new belts and hoses as opposed to serviceable belts and hoses. It doesn’t work that way. You might if you are going to sell it get more money that way, but you are not going to get any more on a trade-in.

So the key thing: appearance, appearance, appearance.