Mom is trading in her CR-V soon, and the dealer is giving her $1200. Its a 2007 model with 145,000 miles on the ODO.
The bad: The outside has been washed maybe 5 times in its life, so the paint needs serious attention. It's faded dull, but only one small rust spot. The inside is a light tan color that looks like it spent it's life as the floor of a horse stall. Dad cut pieces of the dash out and added many "custom touches" that left many holes behind. It mysteriously died on the highway recently (a jump fixed it) and recently an emissions warning light came on. It is not currently inspected and needs about $900 to pass PA inspection.
The good: It starts and runs, recently got a new power steering hose and a new battery. There is surprisingly no bad rust underneath, short of some brackets and such. What is needed for inspection are end-links and some basic mechanical stuff along with fixing some leaks.
So the question is, considering that I don't have a winter project yet, could I fix the stuff myself and sell it for enough to give mom $1200 and still make a small profit? If I am lucky with parts from the junkyard, and I learn to polish paint, perhaps I could make it into a cool buggy for someone. It will never be a good-looking car, but perhaps with some knobby tires and fog lights some kid would love it?
Like this, only worse.
Flip it. Clean it up and make it look as factory stock as possible. Take off dead head stickers - really clean it up.
Do something like a blue book or edmunds search for 2007 CRV with 150,000. If it isnt above $3.5K you might be hurting to clear $1,200 after all the work you'll have to do.
Kelly Blue Book says it might sell somewhere between $4k and $6K if it passes inspection, and is in "good" condition.
Do it! I did a $1,200 'Buy it now' plus fees for this one and you have a much better starting point.:
...From your description, factory stock sounds like a lot of work, but check your local market for comparables of what you can make it. A young family with a few grubby kids may love it for $2,000+ as it is.
If it wasn't from PA but a Southern car instead - I would give you $4K sight unseen.
In reply to pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) :
I'll bet that $100 gets both the in and out professionally detailed. Certainly less than $200. Find the guys who do the detail work for used car lots, like buy-here or lower end lots. The Lexus dealer buys only used cars that are already clean. You want the detailers who specialize in lower end dealers. They're used to this kind of work, have the equipment and know the tricks.
Everything always comes around when I'm out of money.
In reply to pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) :
List the car on the Youngstown CL and don't bother with the full $900 since the Ohio buyer won't have to pass PA inspection but shoppers will drive the 1 hour to buy a CRV.
Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:
Do something like a blue book or edmunds search for 2007 CRV with 150,000. If it isnt above $3.5K you might be hurting to clear $1,200 after all the work you'll have to do.
Kelly Blue Book says it might sell somewhere between $4k and $6K if it passes inspection, and is in "good" condition.
Just keep in mind that that value is dropping pretty much by the day at this point. And that the beginning of the year is usually the weakest point in the used car market.
Catalytic converter might be worth a good chunk of that $1200
Sonic
UberDork
12/1/22 8:55 p.m.
But in April after he freshens it up it will sell well at tax time. I'm sure you can find almost anything in a junkyard, like a new dash to make the custom modifications go away.
In reply to dps214 :
CRV and Rav4 are the highest demand used cars. It will sell amazingly quick any time of the year.
Have any photos? But I'd agree with the suggestion to detail it, fix nothing, and send it on its way. I bet that turns into a $3500 car with a thorough cleaning, and every town has a "we detail any car for $200" place that every used car dealer uses.
For some reason I'm interested in the dash modifications. For no reason.....
