Used Car Price Guides

Pricing guides help both car buyers and sellers. Buyers can easily determine what makes/models/years they can afford and understand what they might expect to pay. Sellers can learn how to fairly price their vehicle.

Multiple sources - no standards
There are no actual "standard" used car prices but consumers, dealers, and financial institutions have to be able to refer to sources that they respect and trust as a basis for valuation agreement. Therefore, the existence of companies such as:

• The Other Price Guide (their lawyers don't want us mentioning their name)
• Edmunds
• NADA Guides

Your location matters
Prices for a particular make/model vehicle can vary across the country. Convertibles are worth more in the South than in the far North. A car without air conditioning is almost worthless in the desert Southwest and Florida. Pickup trucks are of more value in rural areas than in cities. Large comfortable cars sell for higher prices in regions of the country populated heavily by retirees.

Therefore, the used car pricing services that we have mentioned (except NADA Guides) first ask you for your zip code in an attempt to factor your location into the pricing data.

Three kinds of prices
When researching used car prices, you'll typically find three kinds of prices:

Dealer Retail Price is the price you would expect to pay if buying from a licensed new-car or used-car dealer — retail price. Dealer prices will always be higher because of business costs and need to make a profit.

Private-Party Price is the price you would expect to pay if you were buying from an individual, not a dealer. Although many sellers think they should be able to get the same price as a dealer, buyers often disagree. (NADA does not provide private-party prices, only trade-in and retail)

Dealer Trade-in Price is the price you would expect to receive from a dealer if you were to be trading your car — essentially the wholesale price. This is also the price that a dealer might expect to pay for a car at a dealer wholesale auction.

Prices may vary
Unfortunately used car pricing is not an exact science. So the prices you get from different sources often don't agree with each other — frequently by a wide margin. This is a result of getting data from different sources and making different judgements about that data.

An example
Assume we have a 1997 Ford Crown Victoria base 4-door sedan that we want to sell, not trade. It has standard equipment, is in good condition, and has 75,000 miles. Here are our results for private-party sales prices:

Since NADA doesn't provide private-party prices, we compared their $7200 retail price to Edmunds retail prices as follows:

What to do
It's certainly confusing when you find a variety of prices. Which one is "right?" Which one is more "accurate?" Which one should you use?

The best answer to this dilemma is to cross-check prices with other sources in your area such as newspaper classifieds and "auto trader" magazines — and add a dose of your own good judgement to arrive at your price.

Some people favor one source, such as Edmunds, as being more realistic than the others, and base their price only on that source. Others like to use multiple sources and average all the prices they find. Others visit local dealers who have similar cars and adjust down to get a private-party price. There's simply no "right" way to do it, so use the method that is most comfortable to you.