what is my car worth?

if you are trying to work out what your vehicle is worth, the honest answer is that there is a range, and where you land in it depends on who is buying and what happens after they look at it.

we appraise against Canadian Black Book, which is the guide the trade uses. that gives a starting range for your year, model, trim and kilometres. what moves you inside that range is the car itself: tires, brakes, the service history, whether the air conditioning still works, what the paint looks like in daylight.

bring it to us in Aylmer and we will look at it

we buy vehicles outright, and we take them on trade. you do not have to be buying anything from us to sell us your car.

we are at 188 Talbot St W in Aylmer, which is a short drive from St Thomas, Tillsonburg, Belmont, Springfield and most of Elgin County, and under an hour from London.

every offer is subject to a look, including the ones online

this is worth understanding before you take an instant offer from a website.

an online buyer gives you a number from a form. that number is an estimate generated from what you typed, and it is subject to an inspection that happens later, usually when somebody arrives to collect the car. if the inspection finds something, the number changes at that point, when you have already mentally sold the vehicle and possibly bought the next one.

our number is subject to a look too. we will not pretend otherwise. the difference is that the look happens first, in person, with you standing beside the car, and if something changes the figure we tell you what it was and show you. no number gets revised after you have committed to it.

trading it in is worth 13% more than the number on the offer

this is the part almost nobody accounts for, and it is worth more than the difference between any two offers you are likely to be given.

in Ontario, when you trade a vehicle in against a purchase, you pay HST only on the difference between the two, not on the full price of the car you are buying.

so a $10,000 trade does not save you $10,000. it saves you $10,000 plus the 13% tax you would otherwise have paid on that $10,000. the trade is worth $11,300 to you.

on a $30,000 vehicle:

the second column leaves you $1,300 worse off for the same two vehicles and the same money changing hands.

an online buyer cannot give you this. not because they will not, but because they are not selling you the next car, and the tax rule only applies when the trade and the purchase are the same transaction. it is the one advantage a local dealer has that no amount of scale can take away.

which is why a trade allowance that looks slightly lower than an outright cash offer often leaves you further ahead. compare the allowance plus 13% against the cash offer, not the two headline numbers.

what moves the figure

• tires and brakes. the two things a buyer has to spend money on immediately, so they come off the number first.
• service history. records that show the work was done are worth real money because they take the guesswork out.
• kilometres, against the year. well under average helps, well over hurts, and the guide already accounts for the middle.
• accident history. reported damage affects value whether or not it was repaired properly.
• colour and options, more than people expect on some models and less on others.
• the time of year. convertibles are worth more in May. all wheel drive is worth more in November.

what we will tell you

what your vehicle is worth to us, and why. if the number is lower than you hoped, you will hear the reason rather than a shrug, and you can decide whether to spend money fixing something or take the number as it is.

we would rather tell you that your car is worth less than you thought and have you believe us, than quote a figure we have to walk back later.