If you’re looking to sell your used car in San Diego Or anywhere else, for that matter), then cleaning is certainly something you may wish to look into ahead of giving it over to a dealership – and certainly before selling it privately. Beyond potentially increasing the value of the car and making it easier to find a buyer, cleaning a car before turning it over to a new owner is a simple act of courtesy more than anything else. But how much of a difference to your car-selling fortunes can you make through cleaning alone?
When to Clean?
Selling privately is all about convincing an individual to purchase your car at the price you want, and a dirty car is only an indication that something more serious might be wrong with it as well. While it’s unlikely to affect the car’s actual performance, having the most basic cleaning tasks left undone sends a very strong signal that a car has suffered neglect. “If this guy hasn’t even bothered to wipe down the dashboard” a potential buyer might think, “what state might the engine be in?”
Yet also important when deciding whether to clean a car is recognizing your limited resources to do so. Just as restoration can be expensive enough to make it not worth the extra money you would make on a sale, so too is only going so far with commercial cleaning products. To be sure, cleaning a car professionally costs less than restoring a car (it will increase the value less too), but it’s worth bearing in mind that reputable dealerships typically have the resources to clean and restore any cars they deem worthy of resale. While a lack of cleaning might deter a private buyer, a dealership has the confidence of knowing the car can always be cleaned before being sold on. Moreover, buying cleaning products in bulk means the chances are they can do it for considerably less than the cost of cleaning to a private individual.
An example of one such dealership that offers this service (and much more besides to make your used car sellable), is Cash for Cars in San Diego. If you find yourself selling your used car in San Diego or the Southern California area, then this is a dealership to be considered. Not only is cleaning and restoration a breeze, but connections to a nationwide network of outlets mean that they have enough market reach to all but guarantee a buyer for your car – whatever the condition. To be sure, when using a dealership like Cash for Cars in San Diego, cleaning should not be a headache you have to worry about – which is not to say turning in a filthy car will do you any good, of course.
How to Clean
As mentioned, the extent of the cleaning you should do will depend on who you are selling to. Again, cleaning is more important for those selling to private buyers than to dealerships with resources to restore and clean a car. There are a couple of basic cleaning tasks though that you should probably do in all cases.
For one thing, you should certainly clean the car’s exterior – windows and body – before approaching any buyer. This can be as simple as getting out the sponge and soapy water or heading to a car wash. An additional polish is optional and probably unnecessary. Similarly, you will want to deal with any serious stains on the upholstery, but restitching any tears is probably going too far. As a rule of thumb, try to clean enough but not too much.
