6 Quick Ways to Improve Your Car’s Resale Value

It is a no brainer that a car should have a regular maintenance schedule. Every new car owner is passionate about maintaining their car regularly. However, as time passes and the car scales more mileage, you start developing a laidback attitude towards its maintenance. The maintenance agenda goes from being “regular” to “when needed.”

Driving your car to a garage just when there is a bigger maintenance/repair issue pops up doesn’t feel like a wrong strategy as long as you are looking at the next couple of months or a year. However, this approach is not good if you want to resale the vehicle or want to drive it for the rest of your life.

When you have regular maintenance of your car, it receives many preventive repairs that can aggravate into bigger problems otherwise. This preventive and hands-on care helps you in keeping your car in pristine condition.

Having a car doesn’t mean to just rev it up for all small and big commuting needs. Driving your car to the neighborhood departmental store several times a day may seem like a thing of convenience. But if you are not doing grocery shopping in bulk, there is no point in using a vehicle and burning fuel for such trivial chores.

On the one hand, it is adding up unnoticeable mileage to the meter. On the other hand, you are depriving yourself of the neighborhood walk that may be truly useful in your sedentary lifestyle. Similarly, driving your vehicle for interstate commutes too often is also not recommended.

The average mileage of a vehicle is around 13,000 miles per year. If your car exceeds that average, its resale value will be cut down no matter how good it looks.

Attention all owners with vehicles boasting price tags north of $40,000: If you want to secure a good resale offer for your vehicle, consider taking it to an auto detailing facility. Many car owners are still new to the concept of auto detailing and haven’t grasped it fully.

Auto detailing is nothing but an effort to get the best look of the paintwork and interior of your car. It involves a more thorough and excessive cleaning and polishing of the car from both inside and outside. A couple of hundred dollars that you will spend on the detailing of your car can add a few thousand dollars to its resale value on auctions.

Many people tend to ignore all the easy fixes that their vehicle requires before putting it on the listing. It may give you peace of mind knowing that these tiny little things will be the next owner’s headache. But keep in mind that such an attitude won’t give you good resale value.

Replace the burned-out lamps of your vehicle’s headlight or taillight. Top it off with the fluids (brake oil, engine oil, windshield washer fluid, etc.) Also, take care of all the simple scratches and slight parking lot fender benders. They won’t entail a serious bodywork involving a large amount of money.

Tires and lights make the first impression of your vehicle for any potential buyer. If the tires and lights are shining and complementing the rest of the body, people will take more interest in your vehicle and offer. Since tires are the most exposed and worn out parts of a vehicle, you need to have them replaced whether you are selling your vehicle or not.

If you are planning to sell your vehicle, replace the tires a couple of months beforehand. This way, you can get to use them for a while and also because then they won’t look out of place to a potential buyer. Otherwise, brand new tires on a used vehicle are easily picked up. Also, don’t forget to polish the rims while preparing your car for the resale auction.

Many people don’t give too much thought to vehicle parking. They park it wherever they find a spot. Again, this is not something that affects your vehicle immediately. However, it can affect the resale value over the years.  For instance, parking your vehicle directly under the sun is not good for its paint job, no matter if its winter or summer.

So, look for shade in the form of a garage or covered carport instead of a tree. Trees may protect your vehicle from sunlight, but they can’t save its paint from the acidity of birds’ droppings and falling branches. Remember that a car with its intact OEM paint always gets a better price than the one who has received external paint jobs.

Last but not least, maintain paperwork of all the small and big car repairs and maintenance that you have had. There is a lot of difference between telling a potential about the contractor you have used for detailing and showing them the receipts of the work. Besides authenticating all your maintenance, a properly stacked maintenance record shows how serious you have been about your car. People want to buy a used car from an owner who remained diligent with its maintenance.

Whether you are looking to sell your car at the best price or want to buy used vehicles in great conditions and at reasonable price points, you need to be on RideSafely. It is a worldwide portal of auto auction where you can buy cars by their vehicle type, make, model, and models.

The portal lists more than 60,000 new vehicle auction listings every week and help users on more than 700 auction locations in the US. With RideSafely, you can also buy a car in the US and ship it to your destination seaport without a hassle.