It ain’t easy selling your cars

The last time I sold a car was six years ago and it was pretty easy. I posted an ad on Craigslist and the next weekend I had several buyers come look at it and sold it to the second or third. This time around was not quite as easy.

I posted the cars on LetGo, OfferUp, Next Door, CargGrus.com, Facebook, and Autotrader.com. I got very few responses. It seems Subarus are not nearly as popular in Florida, where all-wheel drive is far less important, as they are in Colorado. After a couple of weeks I realized that I probably overpriced them, since no one would value the features and would be comparing them to other vehicles without AWD, heated seats, remote start, etc.

Eventually, a used car dealer made me a pretty reasonable offer on both cars as a package deal and was even willing to delay the transaction until the day before we were to go to Beaufort, NC to visit carrie’s mom. We probably could have gotten a little more elsewise, but it would also save a lot of hassle dealing with no-show buyers (I'm always amazed how many people set up appointments then just don’t show up).

Of course, things never go as planned! The morning of the sale, I get a call from one of the drivers coming from the dealer for the cars. His flight was canceled and he can’t get another flight out of his little airport until the next day. Turns out, the dealer buying them is actually in North Carolina near the Smoky Mountains, where Subarus are fully appreciated.

Now, they're willing to delay the purchase 11 days until we get back home from our trip. But this is still frustrating and stressful, because when we return, we have less than two weeks before we leave our home for good. If something falls through with the deal, we’d be in quite a pickle and would likely end up getting a lot less money for the cars to sell them fast.

But as Carrie and I are discussing this predicament, we realize that since the buyer is actually in North Carolina, we might be able to drive the cars to carrie’s mom’s place and do the deal there. Since we had cheap, one way flights, it wouldn’t cost us anything more if the dealer would pay for our gas (and the dealer would save on a couple of one way flights himself). Of course, this is only feasible because we have the flexibility in our schedules to leave for a road trip with just a few hours of notice (really, just leaving half a day earlier than originally planned).

A few text messages with the buyer's agent and before we know it the plans are made. So we drove here to North Carolina and at noon today the buyer's drivers arrive. The deal closes and Carrie and I breathe a huge sigh of relief to have one of the major chores on our list completed.