Swing it by a Carmax. They'll make a cash offer regardless if you are purchasing from them or not. Their written offer is good for 30 days/1K miles. Their written offer is an effective leverage tool at dealership. A bunch of printouts from the internet is not.

I've sold Carmax 2 vehicles out right and they got very close on a 3rd. There are about 6 in the DFW metroplex and another half dozen in Houston, couple in Austin & Sanatone.

 

From what I have experienced in the past KBB is geared towards making the most for the stealership while Edmunds is geared towards making the most for the individual and the actual is somewhere in between the figures of those two institutions.

Like GAWD mentioned, taking the car to Carmax to get it appraised is a great idea and a good benchmark to see what you are likely to get for your car.

 

Carmax appraisal then see if dealer will beat or match. If not just sell it to carmax and then use it for down. Thats exactly what I did last week. Dealer matched carmax for the trade in so papers started rolling. lol

 

Do people not sell their car by themselves any more?

 

^ good question. if the trade-in value is close to private sale value then i get the inclination to trade in. this gives you the tax advantage of lowering the new vehicle sale price. depending on a guy's regional taxes, as long as trade-in is ~85% of retail then it may make sense to trade and let the dealer worry about selling.

however, trade-in is often much worse than 85%. an example is with my previous G35. i took it to several dealers who were all quoting me $10k, plus or minus $500. this was unacceptable since i knew the current market values were closer to $15k. that was too big of a delta to make it worthwhile. so i ended up selling it privately for $16k in two days to the first guy who saw it. that put several thousand dollars extra in my pocket, even after tax.

another example was a Mazda MX-6 i had before the G35. Dealer wanted to give me $3k, i sold for $6500.

bottom line is dealers usually do very well off good condition used vehicles that they keep on their lots. in many cases they make higher margins off used sales than new sales.