TT Trade Ins

[North of 49°]

Selling privately doesn't always work out, unfortunately. When we decided to move on from our hybrid to the trailer we have now, we had originally thought to sell it privately in mid-summer, put the money away and use it as a down payment in the spring; we would have had to sacrifice half a season's worth of camping, but instead let someone else enjoy it.

So we cleaned out the hybrid, took plenty of photos and advertised locally. Lots of door-kickers and tire-slammers came to look at it, and some people I knew right away that this wasn't the trailer for them -- for example, the elderly couple who came with their adult son, and the son wanted to buy a trailer for his parents. When I saw the old man coming up my driveway with an oxygen bottle, I knew a hybrid was NOT the trailer for them!

But what really annoyed me was the young couple with two small kids. This seemed to be the right starter trailer for someone like them, and they asked all the right questions. They showed up in a mini-van, but assured me that they had a pickup that could tow it. About a week later they emailed me and made an offer, which I accepted. Another week goes by, so I emailed them back. Well, they can't do the deal this weekend because the husband was out of town. Another week goes by and they can't do it, too busy. The week after, they can't get financing. Then the husband is out of town again. It just went on and on, one "reason" after another, and I even offered to deliver it to their home and set it up for them for a walk-through, nope, sorry, too busy this weekend. Finally, when the time to put it in winter storage came around -- that's how long they dragged this on for -- I finally said that it has to go into storage, but I could get it out at any time, and I would like a deposit to show that they're still on board with it. That's when they backed out.

Not only did we lose out on half a summer's worth of camping -- our choice, really -- but because we had an offer on the table, we didn't put as much effort into advertising as we should have. And we then had to pay the storage lot fees at the end of the season.

We had thought about examining our legal options, because we had an email chain where they did express their intentions to buy it, but in the end we probably would have paid more in legal fees than what we would have been compensated.

So yeah, our first foray into private sales did not end well.

[Gman1372]

I have more experience selling boats than trailers but both are the same. I purchased my current trailer before I sold my other. I listed it on C-list had to weed out the nitwitz. Once I added a phone number and said no email no text must speak to a human, the garbage stopped and within 4 weeks i had three buyers lined up. Two from out of state. I sold it at a profit.

[eldermike]

Dealers go wholesale by the book on trades. However, the wiggle room comes in when you are trading a desirable unit and they can trim off the selling price on the new unit in the deal. So it depends on the bottom line in the deal package. I have traded and I have sold, there is no rule as to which is best until you work on it from both directions and weigh the outcome.