High school parking lots
Older Neigbors

We bought a car in a private sale for our teen because a friend’s dad had gotten too old to drive and gave us a great deal. But it took four trips to the DC and MD DMVs to straighten out all the titling/tags etc. Would probably not do again.

OP back, thanks for the warnings and tips!

So many flooded vehicles too

Like most things on the internet, the golden age of Craigslist cars is far in the past. Facebook Marketplace seems to be even worse for fake/wrong postings and scammers.

I have bought our last three cars via people at work or my neighborhood listserv. It's not a fast process because you're working with a smaller pool of people instead of the whole internet.

FB marketplace and Craigslist are full of scammers. When this happened to my neighbor, she put a message on our neighborhood FB page and our active Elementary school listserve for people to let her know if they had a car to sell or knew someone who did. That way she was working with someone she knew personally.

Anything thing you can do if you have a trusted mechanic is to let them know you are looking. They may have another customer whose car they can check out for you and recommend.

Private sales aren’t what they used to be. We bought used car a year ago and many of the “private sales” we saw on CL and FB marketplace were actually small dealers. Also, some of the listings were cars that we found issues and it is my guess that the owners couldn’t sell easily to carmax.

If you are looking for a “real” private sale it’ll probably have to come from word of mouth. I’d be very hesitant in buying a car off CL or FBM. You might find needle in haystack but chances are slim IMO.

Ask co-workers. We sold three really good car only because we wanted new ones.

Ask people at your work. The only private party sale I've done was to a coworker who wanted my quirky car when I was done with it. When it needed too many repairs, I had a dealer price it as a trade-in and sold it as-is to my coworker. I told him the offer and he beat it by $300.

OP back. Thank you all so much for your replies!

Also OP. I’m the minivan PP. most of the people who contacted us were small time private car dealers looking to buy our car and resell it. Several offered to buy the car sight unseen. So just be aware that they are your competition so to speak. We preferred to sell to someone that was going to use the car, and we probably gave up a few hundred dollars to do that. But it felt right.

We sold a 9 year old minivan this way recently. Tried to use Craigslist but had more luck with FB marketplace. Ended up selling to a minister and his wife for about $800 more than Carmax would have given us. Win-win!

trucars, cargurus, autotrader. Just filter for private sales

Have you looked on FB marketplace or Craigslist?

My car was totalled by my son and the insurance to cover it will not cover much in the way of dealer fees. Occasionally I see a car for sale on the neighborhood FB page or in a community listserv, but it is rare. Are there any good places I should be looking? Thanks!