I wanted to share a few more of Ryan’s profitable used car deals.
You may have read a post a few months back where Ryan was describing some of his used car deals.
Well, he’s up to the same shenanigans again.
They aren’t really shenanigans, but I like the word “shenanigans” so thought I’d throw it in there. :-)
Okay, so here are a few emails from Ryan sharing some of his latest used car deals…
Hey Steve,
I bought a Mercury Cougar 11 days ago, I got buys and couldn’t show it, then I got sick, and then I went out of town. :-(
So it took me longer to actually show and sell it, but when I was finally available to show it, I sold the car.
It was a 2000 Mercy Cougar with Leather Interior, 110,850 miles, w/ a rebuilt title. I bought it for $2000 and I sold it for a cool $2850.
-Ryan
And Ryan talks about a Denali he didn’t make much money on but was glad when it finally sold and a Mustang he did really well with…
Hey Steve,
Great read on your government auctions post.
Finally sold my Denali, what a bad buy that was. I still came out $300 on top, but ack. The benefit of it was I learned a lot about working on a vehicle and I learned a lot about how much I like buying cheaper cars while I had $6200 of my car funds wrapped up in that beast.
Saturday at 2:00 pm. I bought a 98 Mustang for $1400, it showed 172,540 on the odometer, but the odometer had stopped working so who 
knows how many miles it really had. It ran good, shifted good, AC blew Cold, Heat Hot, and had a real nice Sony CD player in it. I cleaned it up Saturday night, bolted the passenger seat back down and “TIRE FOAMED” the engine :-) I posted it on Craigslist around 5 pm for $3350 OBO on Saturday and had a few calls and several texts, nothing really materialized other than some low ball offers. Right before bed I dropped it to $2950, claiming wife was making me do it so we’d sell it faster. I got out of church around 12:30 on Sunday and had like 8 texts a couple voicemails and ahandful of missed calls. I connected with a few potential buyers and sold it to the 2nd one who looked at it at 4:00 p.m. for $2500. I made $1100 for owning this car for 26 hours…not a record by any means, but a GREAT turn around. I went ahead and left
my listing up to see if I got lucky or not on the sale, since I sold it I’ve had at least a dozen more calls and texts from interested buyers.
Moral of this story is Mustangs sell, pretty much regardless of mileage.
With some of the rest of my Denali money I also bought a 2000 mountaineer fully loaded with 109000 miles on it, worth about $6400 I paid $2300 got to get some door handles fixed but after that she’ll be primed for profit.
Take care.
-Ryan
And here is another email from Ryan talking about the money he made from selling a Mercury Mountaineer…
Hey Steve,
Just checking in to say Hey!
Hope things are going well.
I sold my 2001 Mercury Mountaineer 2 weeks ago for a profit of $2,053.37.
Bought it for $2300 and put on some new door handles and did some maintenance and sold her for $4500, its a pretty good story.
The guy was literally walking away and I went all “used car salesmen” on him and talked him into buying the vehicle…first time I’d ever done that. But I figured, “what’d I have to lose” since he had already told me it was a nice vehicle and all, but that he was going to pass. I actually sold a car haha…the car for once didn’t do all the work for me.
I’ve got 3 cars right now I went in 50-50 with a buddy and made a nice $300 profit in 10 days on a 2000 Kia Sportage, so I’ve slowed down a little since February where I sold 5 cars but I’m still trucking along.
I got one of my better buys as of late getting an 01 Mercury Sable in pretty great condition for only $2000, its loaded and the Luxury series so its worth almost $4000. Due to work scheduling I couldn’t go meet a guy about a Honda that he was gonna sell me for $1600…he ended up selling it to someone else before I could get there for $2000 BAHHHH so you know that was a money maker.
-Ryan
So thats what Ryans been doing. How about you? Please leave your comments below.
Steve
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Greetings to all,
I have a question for Ryan.
How far do you go into fixing a vehicle? Most of the the vehicles i buy are about 10 years old as well, but there is always something else i want to fix or buy to enhance the look or the performance of the vehicle and I know that cuts into profits. So, do you do a complete tune up, (spark plugs, oil, filters, etc), how about waxing after a thorough wash and a deep interior cleansing? Also, what do you do if you get a engine light on the vehicle? How far do you go into trying to solve the problem?
Thanks,
Armando
Hey Ryan, are you some kind of car buying and selling wizard?
No haha, not at all, but I get better and better at is as I do the Wash Rinse Repeat process of Steve’s Methods.
Hey Armando,
I go different lengths on different vehicles. Very few that I sell are in perfect condition, inside, out, engine, etc….
I’ve sold about 20 cars in the last 15 months and I’ve only changed spark plugs on one vehicle…
I’ve waxed a couple of my cars and I really like the look, but honestly it is really only helpful on a car if it looks really good to start with.
about 50% of the time I will change the oil, or have the oil changed along with a tire rotation. Normally if the alignment is off on a car I will get an alignment done as that generally causes concern in most people, however I’ve sold two that needed an alignment pretty bad and people were ok with them.
I fix a lot of the stuff on my own with very little knowledge…for instance on that Mountaineer…my email made it sound pretty easy…but……
When I bought it the door handles were not what we will call “mint” condition…and they only got worse shortly after. My GrandDad-In Law came and helped me. We took all the door panels off and replaced 3 door handles and fixed the 4th. Literally only 1 door opened from the outside and it wasn’t the driver’s door. I spent about $150 on door mechanism, interior, and exterior handles and some springs and spent about 4 hours working on it. Each time you do something on your own, you are better equipped to handle it yourself. I took it to a friend of mine that owns an Auto glass business…he couldn’t even get the driver door opened and said a quick quote would be over $1000 job for a body shop…learning to do things on your own saves you BIG TIME MONEY!
When it comes to cleaning 99.9% of the time I wash the car by hand inside and out. Car soap sprayed on, take a car rag and scrub it down, rinse with water, then dry it. Vacuum inside, shampoo carpet if it is bad, armor all everything in and out, clean windows in and out, spray air freshener, and tire foam the engine and you should be good to go.
Engine light on, I’ve bought a few gas caps, also some fuel injector cleaner is always great to add when your gas tank is at rock bottom as is a few ounces of PURE ACETONE (A FEW OUNCES – 1-2 oz per 5 gallons).
Best bet is to do what you think is best, and go from there, I’ve scaled some things back, and scaled others up.
I used to always take the car and get the oil changed the day after I bought it, now some times I don’t. Always make sure the car smells good.
Best of Luck Selling! SELL CHEAP BUY CHEAPER
Acetone in the engine also increases gas mileage, what I meant by 1-2 oz per 5 gallons…was a reference to 1-2 oz of Acetone per 5 Gallons of GASOLINE unleaded.
Steve,
I really like the stuff Ryan is sending your way and that you are sharing it.
@Armando: I deal in older cars too. I used to do too much to the vehicles I was selling. I spent too much time and too much money replacing and making things pretty. I read Steves book and it became a lot more clear to me in being able to hit that “just right” balance or sweet spot. Now I can sum up what needs to be done to a car in a couple minutes and I’m right about that probably 95% of the time. Obviously, and Steve covers this in his book, what you do or don’t when preparing a car to sell depends a lot on how expensive the car is too.
I’ll tell you what scaled me down the most in what I do to cars in order to sell them…I bought a couple of junkers…and I didn’t do much to them because I wasn’t sure what could be done other than cleaning…and one of those yielded me my largest Profit margin of $2,400.00….so it has made me a tad lazy….
Good stuff…thanks Steve and Ryan!
Thank you, Ryan and Lawrence for your experiences and suggestions!
I appreciate all the tips and comments.
Much success to all, Armando.
Hey guy;s good read ..iv been buying and selling for a few month;s now ..my first was an 95 s10 2 wheel drive..160000 miles bought it for 1500 and sold it for 2600…my second was a nissan hardbody 2 wheel drive 94000 miles no air…bought it for 2000 sold it for 2500..i currently bought a 02 hyundai sonata 89000 actual miles…having a timing belt put in it then it goes on the market…i like steves material from what i can tell he;s a great guy…..take care all…..Dave.
Hi Ryan,
I started selling cars with a friend in january 2011 and so far have sold 13 cars. I usually buy 2005 to 2007 hyundai accents directly from Adesa or Manheim. I find it strange however that some weeks the phone doesnt stop ringing and emails and other weeks its like we didn’t exist. We have a company name and website. We use Kijijji and Craiglist to place our ads and wanted to know where else we could advertise to sell our cars. What has the return for our buck? Thanks again.
99% of the time I just use Craigslist…one time I paid for an ad in the paper, it did sell the vehicle….one other site I use is Mautofied.com very good to list a vehicle if its a type that fits the site, check it out.