Looking for a small MPV or Estate, bangernomics teritory so about £1000. Everything I’ve looked at has been dodgy in some way, V5’s with the wrong address, MOT dated yesterday with bald spare tyres, one looked like it had been in a flood it was so wet inside!And this is the ones that I actually look at, it seems there are quite a lot of not that obvious, unless you’ve been looking for two months and you see the same adverts come up for the thrid time! Now I know I’m not gonna get a lot for a grand, but getting really bored of looking now. Where else can I look?

ebay
Autotrader

APF

The lack of feedback/tracking/fees of gumtree do attract the shadier end of the market.

I’ve always found ebay best for that price range. Pick the owner and not the car! Yada, yada!

My Golf was on Gumtree. Described accurately and 100% honest. It just attracted even more time wasters than eBay.

Every time I’ve looked on Gumtree the genuine/dodgy ratio swings heavily towards the latter.

I use ebay, gumtree and Autotrader. You will be surprised what you can get for 1000. I normally purchase around that mark and havent come off too badly. I ask for reg number and V5 cert number before I visit. That way you can check them out on the .gov site https://www.gov.uk/check-mot-history . You can see past mot’s so get some idea of condition, location, history. I always do a full online check if I am semi serious http://www.rac.co.uk/buying-a-car/rac-car-data-check . I always go by the seller as much as the vehicle.

Ours was genuine.
Sold easily enough too, slightly above bangernomics at £2500 but I was pleasantly surprised how easily it sold.

It’s a shame every car buyer now seems to act/talk like Mike Brewer though.

They guy that bought it came round to view, first thing he said?

It’s a bit more expensive than I’d like and it has too many miles…

So why bother coming to look then, he was clearly interested as he bought it a few days later.

Had no problems myself – just bought an Audi A4 Avant (V6, 3litre Quattro – I got a bit carried away!).

Good price, great condition, V5 all in order, pretty full service history, couple of new tyres, spare braek pads, and receipts for recent work done.

Looking to sell my old C5 estate if you are near Fife. Well below your budget. Mot till May, four new tyres. £400.

we used it to flog my wifes old focus, 9 months mot 4 good tyres, some service history, doesnt use a drop of oil or water.
asked 500, first person who looked at it offered us 400 .
we took it.
there were a monumental amount of emails asking ‘what is lowest price for car’ etc, but gumtree actually warned us to ignore them, so we did.

I had my Touran on there – I described it as the worn, 160k mile, scratched and dented, about to need a timing belt and with intermittent turbo issue – but full service history, two owners and daily driven car it was.

Someone gave me £2.2k 😯

I never really get why some people talk about the price first. I mean, have a look around the car, check it’s all OK then think about any price negotiation (as long as you haven’t arrived and said basically “I’m desperate to buy a car today right now” like my sister in law did once when I was helping her find a decent one)

That’d be great mcmoonter, but I’m in south wales so it’s a bit of a trek for a £400 car!

Phil, yeah, totally agree about the price thing. Years ago I had a bloke get really shirty with me because I wouldn’t drop the price on a a phone call (I NEVER put “ono” or wherever in my ads) when I said something like ‘if you’re really interested you’ll come and have a look first” he called me names and put the phone down. Hey ho. I sold it fairly quickly.

+1 on the odd price negotiations before you have seen the thing.

I think people are uncomfortable doing it in person…

But it does re-enforce the fact that most folk make the decision to buy things before they even see it…

A lot of stuff on Gumtree seems to be ‘traders’. I’ve seen cars sold and go up for sale again by a different seller (almost identical ad, twice the price) within a couple of hours. The rest seem to be idiots. Gave one a call and they sounded completely stoned at 9am, and totally uninterested in telling me anything about the car. Needless to say I didn’t go look at it. It’s a shame, because the prices on eBay are getting ridiculous.