I'm trying to figure out what the real value of a 996 is? When I look at KBB the values are much lower, like 10k lower, than what people are asking. Is there a better tool to use to figure out a fair value? Or is KBB right and these owners are just unrealistic about what the actual value of their car is?
Thanks

 

Your question is really subjective.
Cars are actually selling between $10k and $35k for non-turbo.
Mileage, Color , Options and Service history all part of it.

Do not under consider service history.

Don't think 25k miles is better than 50k miles.

Do not be turned off of PCA track time. Most of the cars used at DE events are maintained to very high standards.

Colors like silver and black will bring less money than an optional color.

Be aware of IMS, but realize there is preventable maintenance for this.

David

 

Agree with the above. Due to the potential cost of major component repair the values can vary much more than for a 'regular' car. I'd also add that most sites use an average of transaction prices. While that makes sense for most cars, Porsches have much fewer transactions since so many fewer are sold. That means fewer cars at the extremes can swing the 'average' value quite a bit.

Considering that even a salvage 911 still has value and there will be more cars sold with at low prices, than for a typical car. Not many buying a '99 Camry chassis to rebuild...
You can buy a rolling chassis for somewhere around $6-8k (hip shot number, don't ask where you can get one for that amount!) and it's my understanding those sales are counted in the averages.

I'm sure you've read it, but spend the few hundred $ for a PPI. Ideally from the place you'd get it serviced but no reason a dealer or trusted indy mechanic that knows Porsches can't do it if the car isn't local.

 

First price is an opinion, not a fact. While the seller is entitled to his opinion you as a buyer are entitled to your own opinion.

To know the value of a 996 buy one. Then you'll know. At least for that particular car and the seller and who knows how many other factors there are.

Other than that all you can do is make a guess, though you want to try to make an educated guess.

My advice and what I've used in the past that has helped me answer the question of what a car is worth is to use KBB to learn the wholesale/trade in price of a particular car you are interested in. You can use NADA too. If there is some disagreement between the two sites I use the one with the lower price, if I'm buying. (Selling I'd use the one with the higher price.)

Not my job to reconcile the differences and not my job to do the seller's job of helping justify a higher price or if I'm selling a used car the buyer's job of justifying a lower price.

Then if the car is worth owning at all -- and that is important thing to know as best as one can know -- the car is worth the trade in/wholesale price to whatever the seller is willing to let the car go for or whatever one is willing to pay.

If you want and have the time follow some cars for sale and then when you see the ad go away call the seller about the car, acting the role of a johhny come lately buyer of the car, and see if he will share what he sold the car for. Once the car is sold the seller can be more willing to share this. Not always, but sometimes. But developing a feel for the market price of cars this way can be a drawn out process. Also, unless you have the opportunity to check the cars out beforehand you can't know their true condition.

Dealer used cars have a pretty substantial mark up. (Years ago my father in law sold cars. He made a good living selling new cars, then a better living selling used cars. Then he got into selling RVs and made even more more money.)

(My personal experience: Back in April of 2009 I sold, that is traded in a 2006 GTO, in good shape with just short of 40K miles on the car to a Porsche dealer. Received something just over $15K trade in allowance for it towards a new 2008 Cayman S, which was believe it or not itself marked down by $12K, from an MSRP of $62.6K to $50.6K. This was back in April 2009. The Porsche dealer owner also owned a GM dealership and after a week or so -- as I expected -- I found the GTO parked on the GM dealer used car lot with a sign with $21999 crossed out and a 2nd sign on the car's window with a "sale" price of $18999. That's a nearly 20% mark up. And if the buyer needed financing, an "extended warranty", etc., the mark up (profit margin) would have been higher.)

Private sellers can be even more optimistic. Some have bought into the sales pitch the car is an "investment" and price the car accordingly. Private sellers can be hard, make that impossible, to negotiate with especially if they have an optimistic opinion of the car's value and invariably they will have.

Dealers can be a bit more flexible. A dealer knows what he can get for the car at wholesale.

As an aside: There is a large "auto" auction facility not too far from me that a few years ago I visited often -- to test some automotive test equipment I was working on at the time -- and I had a chance to speak with the GM about the business. It was an impressive facility. He told me the auction facility handled around 135K cars/vehicles (cars, pick up trucks, commerical vehicles, motorcycles, boats, trailers, even salvage/wrecked cars a year. (In fact, I sold my 2008 Cayman S with its salvage title it obtained after it was hit and the other driver's insurance company declared the new (4 week old) Cayman S a total loss.)

The auto auction GM told me out of the around 135K vehicles per year that passed through the auction facility's gates (heavily guarded I might add) the facility sold over 90K of these vehicles at auction.

At the facility inside there were areas where people with the proper credentials (I guess licensed car sellers/brokers) could log on to the facility's computer system and call up all sorts of data on cars sold, for how much, condition, and so on. This data probably included cars sold at other associated faclities, too, as this particular auto auction facility was one of a dozen or more scattered about the country.

And when you walk into a car dealer to trade in a car he can almost certainly access something similar to this for his area/region and maybe country wide. Also, he has access to in this case Porsche auto auction facility numbers, the prices of cars that change hands between Porsche and dealers and between Porsche dealers.

Thus the car dealer can know almost to the dollar what he can sell your car for should he be unable to sell it off his lot. This price then, adjusted down a bit to cover vehicle transportation cost and the fee charged by the auction facility, is what he's going to offer you for your car.

And this applies to if the owner of a car you are interested in wanted to trade the car in.

A long winded way of making the point this puts a pretty solid floor price of what a car is worth.

But it gives the seller some way to know what's he's "making" on the car. While he may not make as much on a car you are buying right then and there he's making something. The goal of a car dealer is to move cars. Ideally he'd like to make a you know what load of money on each car, but that's not going to happen. Because it probably happens not too often if the offer is low but if the offer is "reasonable" the dealer will take the offer. He sells a car, makes some money on the car, and can then put some of this money to work so to speak in flooring another by which he can hopefully make more money by selling it.

One can help his case by indicating clearly that he's going to buy a car today if not the one he is at the dealer to look at then another car on his list of cars -- which he can show. The idea is to convey to the dealer that if he sees you walk off his car lot sans a car he's lost a sale to another seller. You won't be back the next day to offer more money.

A private seller OTOH will wrap his arms around his car and you can't pry him away with anything short of paying him what he wants. Well, some things work on a private seller but because he's not a professional car dealer he can't look beyond this car so they don't work as effectively so the job of making a good deal is harder.

What can happen though is the private seller loses interest. He gets frustrated with the lack of a sale and what can happen is because the car remains unsold begins to develop a "stigma" that maybe something is wrong with the car.

So this presents an opportunity for a savvy buyer to show up and while not steal the car get it at a better price, something close to "market' if not market.

Or to cut the process short, what one can do is find a motivated seller. One who is motivated to sell because he needs the money for say a business, a house purchase, another car because a baby is on its way, wants to or needs to relocate for a job, has lost a job, etc. In these cases then the seller is more open to accepting a lower price.

These truely motivated sellers don't grow on trees though and you have to be quick to identify a movtivated seller and quick to view the car and quick to decide if the car is worth owning (which means considering the seller is representing himself as motivated in order to lure someone into buying a car that might not be all that it on the surface appears to be).

 

Agree with all of those who answered. Bottom line, a car (Porsche 911) is worth only what you're willing to pay for it. Buy it, love it...I did.

 

KBB is way off and if I could find 911's for what they list I'd but them all day long. Supply and demand, exclusivity, build quality, performance & handling, history, etc, etc is why you have to pay more & when you do you'll never look back. It literally becomes an obsession with a lot of people, me being one of them.