7 Easy Tips for Selling Your Used Car on Craigslist

Craigslist is a powerful tool for vehicle owners who want to quickly and cheaply reach a large local audience of buyers. By following some simple guidelines, you can sell your car with a minimum of hassle and risk.

1. Describe your car in detail. Model, year, mileage, engine and transmission type, condition of interior and exterior, optional features, as well as any recent maintenance -- extra information like why you are selling, or why it's your favorite car ever are much less important than the basics listed above.
2. Attach photos that are good enough to illustrate vehicle condition -- you may consider setting up a separate photo album on hosting sites like flickr.com or smugmug.com so that you can use pictures with very high resolution that serious buyers will appreciate.
3. Choose an asking price depending on if you are trying for a quick sale or for top dollar - a $5,000 car that would sell fast for $4,700 might sit for months if you list it asking for $6,000.
4. Place your ad on a Thursday heading into a weekend when you are sure you'll have free time to show it -- very interested buyers will want to have a chance to get their finances in order ahead of the weekend, when most people will have the free time to go car shopping.
5. When setting appointments to show your car, schedule as many appointments as possible with the expectation that only some of the people who call will actually show up to see the car.
6. Pick a convenient and safe public location to meet buyers, for example a section of a mall parking lot that is relatively uncrowded so that you will be easy to find and have some space to view the car at.
7. Trust your instincts when judging how serious a buyer is -- someone genuinely interested in buying your car will be motivated to agree on a price and execute the exchange of cash for title within a day, understanding that you have other interested buyers to see if they aren't ready.

Following these guidelines will give you the best chance sell your car to a motivated buyer in the shortest time possible. It's important to remember that if the car is described well and priced correctly, there will be a several people interested in buying your car from you as soon as possible!