Prepping to sell

[Unregistered]

It's time to move on and I need to prep my 94 525ia to sell. It's in great shape visually, only a couple of very tiny dings and no chips.

Before I put it up for sale is there anything special I should do? I've tuned it up, replaced all filters, new valve cover gasket, new hood/trunk shocks and a recent cooling system flush. It burns no oil whatsoever. The only "mods" are an EAT chip, 3m headlight covers and some interior items.

[Mr. BILL]

The best thing you can do IMO, is have all the service records organized in a file. Make copies and black out your personal info, address, phone and credit card info. This will do more for both the educated and not so educated potential buyer to help them feel comfortable about buying a ten year old car. Tell them they can have the file if they buy the car.

Other than that, just clean it up real good and make sure the interior doesn't smell like feet. LOL

[TheGeak]

and make sure the roundels are in good shape.

Honestly, if people see bad roundels, their confidence goes down.

[Warren N.CA]

Wash the car before you show it, and remove all candy wrappers, etc from the floor in the back. Detail the car meticulously. (One moron in our local area had the balls to show me an E28 M5 with candy wrappers all over the floor in the back. I was supposed to believe it was well maintained.)

Advertise it on autotrader.com (run til it sells option), and on bimmer.org (free). Do not waste your money on local papers- very inefficient. Do not put a sign in the car window. E34 is too specialized and high priced to sell this way- this is good for Hondas and Toyotas under $3K.

Remove your EAT chip and all other mods you can, and sell those separately. They do not enhance the resale value of your car, and may decrease it. Price your car in accordance with kbb.com - no higher.

Then comes the hard part- WAIT. Used E34s take along time to sell. Don't expect to sell it in less than 3 to 6 months. You could get lucky and sell it faster, more likely you'll need to wait longer, though.




It's time to move on and I need to prep my 94 525ia to sell. It's in great shape visually, only a couple of very tiny dings and no chips.

Before I put it up for sale is there anything special I should do? I've tuned it up, replaced all filters, new valve cover gasket, new hood/trunk shocks and a recent cooling system flush. It burns no oil whatsoever. The only "mods" are an EAT chip, 3m headlight covers and some interior items.

[Unregistered]

Candy wrappers? Not in this thing. :)

When I bought I looked at a nice 535 5speed that was "babied". The floormats were worn through, it had blue headlights and some "kustom kar" sticker on the rear window. Not. I guess when he tossed me the keys and I started it up and was almost blown out of the seat by the stereo being full blast I was supposed to be impressed enough to buy it.

[632 Regal]

remove all beer cans, caps and whisky bottles from the seat pouches too.

[AllanS]

Ummm.... make sure it starts up. On the first try, preferably. And I would try and get rid of any wheel shimmy that it might have.

I sold my 95' 525iA within 1 month of listing it on Autotrader, and had half a dozen calls about it within a little over a week. If it looks good in the picture and you describe it as being as nice as it [hopefully] is, then you shouldn't have trouble selling it. I sold mine for almost the same price that I paid for it (at a used car dealership), 1 year earlier.