Car Auctions

[Anonymous]

Has anyone ever bought a car at one of those car auction places? I think there's one in Manassas and one in Stafford. Was it worth it? I need a little car to drive around, nothing fancy, just an extra car.

[Anonymous]

we get our cars from auctions but not the city ones, we have a friend who has a dealers license and goes to the dealer auctions. The other people at the auctions are dealerships like Carmaxx etc.

Most of the cars at city auctions were impounded, abandoned etc. The dealer auctions are cars coming off leases and in great shape. Our car was 10k less than it was at a carmax. but it is nto for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we get our cars from auctions but not the city ones, we have a friend who has a dealers license and goes to the dealer auctions. The other people at the auctions are dealerships like Carmaxx etc.

Most of the cars at city auctions were impounded, abandoned etc. The dealer auctions are cars coming off leases and in great shape. Our car was 10k less than it was at a carmax. but it is nto for everyone.

us too, 2x. I wouldn't trust myself to buy a car at one of those city auctions, but we have a friend who buys at dealer auctions who I completely trust; he buys what we want wholesale and marks them up like 8% to make a profit (this is his business, he just also happens to be a friend); dealers mark them up more like 20 and I trust our friend way more than a dealer to give the car a good once-over before buying. Not all cars at the dealer auction are off-lease. They get lots of trade-ins and stuff too (no new car dealer keeps all the trade-ins they get - they sell them to the auction to buy the inventory they want) so there's lots of variety. I'd think if you were flexible with what you wanted you could probably get a good bargain through someone like our friend.