How To Buy And Sell Cars – How Much To Invest When Buying And Selling Cars

Hey! What’s goin’ on!

This is another Q&A video on How To Buy And Sell Cars. I have gathered more questions from my subscribers and I came up with a bunch of pages when I printed them out.

This week’s question is from Justin Gibbs. There’s a few things I’d like to discuss regarding his concern. So let’s get started…

Hi Tony, thanks for the email. The burning question I have is how to quickly flip a car with integrity. For example, I bought a 2002 Ford Explorer for $1300 with a bad battery and needed new cat convertors. After putting in $400 and a spruce up, the car drove fine and I wanted to turn it around in the mid $2000 range. But, when I went to get the oil changed, I paid $50 for a general inspection and the inspector came up with about $1500 in repairs like coils, wiring, small exhaust leak, small oil leak. They don’t affect drivability but they were there. As I’m sure is the case with a lot of these 10 year-old cars in that $1500 range. How do you address both buying and selling cars at this level of repair so you aren’t just passing the buck? That’s been the main concern stopping me. Thanks, Justin Gibbs

By “flipping a car with Integrity”, he means selling the car in driveable condition and creating a win-win situation for both you, the seller and the buyer.

This concern is something that I can relate to because I was also stuck with the same dilemma when I first got started with buying and selling cars for profit.

The question is about how much to invest when buying and selling cars, to get it ready to sell. Now, I know some people tend to be perfectionists. I used to be one with buying and selling cars. I wanted to make sure that everything was button-tight with the car, that it had no problems and everything good. But, you have to invest money in order to do that – fixing it like putting brakes on, oil change, etc.

By the time you’re done with all those repairs, you may be looking at only a few hundred bucks to a thousand profit. The more you put in into a vehicle, it just takes more of your profit away.

Now think about those people who do the inspection, the shop that you go to. They want to make money so of course, they’ll tell you all those things your car needs. But in reality, it’s not really the case.

Like if I go over the few things that Justin mentioned in his email…

Coils – you don’t need to replace coils if the car is running fine.

Wiring – What wiring? You said the car is running, everything works. It’s fine. I don’t see any reason to worry about.

Small Exhaust Leak – That’s not a big deal, okay? You don’t have to have that fixed. If it’s bad enough that you could hear the exhaust leak and it’s kind of annoying, once you’re selling the car, maybe you could say…”Hey, I know the car needs a little exhaust repair that’s why I’m going to take off an extra $150 bucks off the sale.” or maybe something like…”That’s why I have it at this price because I know that you’re going to go have that fixed if you want it to sound a little bit better.” So don’t worry about the exhaust leak.

Small Oil Leak – Let me tell you right now, a lot of cars have small oil leaks, alright. It’s just a normal wear and tear. Unless it’s leaking like a half of a quarter of oil a day, I wouldn’t worry about it. But a couple of drips under your car?…It’s what happens. The best thing I recommend you do is – try to find the source, see if you can tighten up a line whether it’s a transmission oil leak line or something else. Try to see what it is and do a little tightening. That might do it. It could also be the gasket around your drain plug. It might be as simple as tightening up your 10mm bolts around the oil pad or 7/16” bolts, whatever they are, if you have an American, Japanese or Asian car. The other thing that could help take care of this problem is, just pressure-washing your vehicle engine down before you sell it.

In the F1 Course, I go over  exactly how to detail and spruce up cars so you can sell them for great profits. I show you all of these things on step-by-step videos, tell you what to do both to the interior and exterior of the car, even how you should show your car on your ads to sell them a lot quicker. So sometimes, you know, all you really have to do are those little things to get them going. And you’ll see that you can sell them really quickly at great profits.

The main point is, you don’t have to be perfect…you don’t have to fix every little thing on a car!

Here’s a great example…

I think it was about 10 years ago when I learned my lesson. I remember it was a 1997 Geo Prizm or one of those Chevy cars. I bought it from the auction for a couple of hundred bucks and I sold it to my neighbor.

Okay, so this is something you really DON’T want to do, because when you sell things to friends, families, or neighbors…they think that it has a lifetime warranty because you sold it to them. Which is totally not true. You’re not responsible to everything that happens to the car after you sell it.

So anyway, when I bought the car it needed a strut, an axle, a tune-up and so I did those things. And then I sold the car for like $1500. I made a thousand dollars on it, roughly. I bought it for $200. I put another $300 bucks in it to get it all fixed up. I think I sold it for even more, like around $1800-$2000. Something like that.

So he was my neighbor and I was living with my mom at that time. She has a 3-storey house and this guy was living on the ground floor so he was on the same house, renting from us. Six months go by, the car broke down and it needed a coil or something and at that time, I was in Automotive School. I was in my 20’s, getting my ASE (Automotive Service Excellence). So he calls me up one day, told me the car broke down and he towed it over to my school. And me and a bunch of my buddies, we jumped on it and we got it fixed right away. That was pretty cool.

But, another six months down the road, he needed something else and he kept coming back to me over and over. Of course, I charged him but he came off like it was my responsibility to do it, you know.

So that’s another thing, don’t sell cars to a close family or friends because you don’t want to have anything to do with it after you sell it, okay?

That’s another tip. You don’t have to be a perfectionist. When you sell it, make sure it’s a win-win situation. The car doesn’t have to be completely done, you don’t have to invest all your money into it. Get it to where it’s running good and if it has a couple of things that needs to be done, tell the buyer…”Hey, it looks like it needs tires and I didn’t want to put the money into it”. And have them worry about it.

You always want to clear at least a thousand dollars profit for yourself on cheap beaters, you know, $2000-$3000 beaters. But if you’re selling cars in the $5000-$6000 range, you will have less problems and you’re going to have more profit range, as well. Of course, cars with less problems, you got less things to do with them.

That’s why I recommend that if you have to start off  in the low range, $500-$600 and sell between the $2000-$2500 range…you’re going to have to do those little steps. But once you move on from that, you can start buying and selling the higher range cars $5000-$6000, maybe $7000 maximum. $10,000 was okay a couple of years ago but now, things are getting tight again in the US so most people are fine with just having a dependable little beater so that’s the range I stay in.

Anyway, if you want to learn more on buying and selling used cars in the private party market or if you want to step up your game and go to the auctions, I’ll show you so much more about this and how to make thousands of dollars extra money, every single month. Even if you are a complete total newbie – college kids, senior citizens looking to make some extra funds, whoever you are and whatever your situation is…you can definitely do this!

Make sure you sign up to get a copy of my FREE Bikini Report that will tell you more about how you can copy my strategies and how you can get started today flipping cars for cash profits.

I hope you like this week’s video. Please LIKE and share it with your friends. Also leave your comments below. I always love hearing from you! Reach out to me, I’m always happy to answer your questions. I’m here to help you succeed.

Ciao!

-Tony