Advice/Opinions/Experience, Please - selling car after damage repair

[kglpdx]

I hope it's ok to start this thread, rather than keep it in the random thread where I had asked about insurance.
Long story short, I was t-boned last week and the repair estimate came back at over $9,000.
I'm not going to want to keep it, so will be looking to sell it as soon as the body shop completes the repairs.

For reference, it's a 2017 SE, DSG, 27k miles, CSG, APR stage 1/DSG tunes, two month old tires, Dynaudio components/speakers (although I'll probably remove them and put the Fender speakers back in) and has Neuspeed RSE10s that I'm removing and putting the black Austins it came with back on (I'll be trying to sell 3 Neuspeeds if anyone needs a spare). A week before I was hit, I picked it up from the body shop where they had removed some paint chips, small dents/scratches and polished it, so other than the damage from the accident, the body look fantastic. A picture of the damage is attached.

Thanks to KyACRASH for the tip about a diminished value claim in the other thread. I'm looking into that already.
If I'm able to get money from a DVC, it will help in how I price for sale.

Has anyone sold a GTI after a large repair and if so, how much of a hit to the selling price did it take?
Did you start out with a price significantly lower or start high and work with offers?
I plan to be upfront about the accident and repairs when selling. It's being repaired by VW body shop, so will be on Carfax.

Thanks in advance for any tips or sharing any similar experiences, I appreciate how friendly everyone is on this forum.

 

[Dnkltd]

I just sold my car to CarMax 2 days ago. Mine was in an accident 5 years ago with roughly the same amount of damage. I tried listing it on Auto Trader and didn’t get a single call in 3 weeks. The CarMax offer was surprisingly not that bad. I actually tried Carvana, Vroom & Autonation and the CarMax offer was over 3k higher than the next closest. If I had to guess, based on similar listings within 500 miles, I ended up taking around a 2-3k hit because of the Carfax accident report. Problem is, it’s very difficult selling privately when there’s an accident. For reference, mine was a 15 Autobahn with 76k miles. Two big reasons that made me decide to sell now were the fact that vehicle prices are crazy right now and I was also concerned that the higher my miles got, the more difficult it would be to sell this thing. In the end I figured get as much as possible now before it’s too late. Hope that helps your decision and good luck.

 

[JC_451]

Seriously, just dump it to one of the car buying services.

You'll probably get pretty good value because of the premium on used cars at the moment. That damage isn't catastrophic and you're not paying the repair bill so you should do well once everything is sorted.

 

[kglpdx]

I did check a few of them and the prices quoted were pretty good, but I don't know how the accident will factor in.
How much did the accident factor into it? Were there any extra hoops to jump through because of the accident?

I just sold my car to CarMax 2 days ago.

 

[Dnkltd]

I did check a few of them and the prices quoted were pretty good, but I don't know how the accident will factor in.
How much did the accident factor into it? Were there any extra hoops to jump through because of the accident?

Like I said, I think it affected it by about 2-3k. There were no hoops whatsoever. I did an online quote and they honored the quote when I took it in. They do an inspection when you go in. The whole process took about an hour.

 

[relive]

How much did the accident factor into it?

Have you tried entering the same information with and without an accident into Carvana, etc? Most of the car buying places don't require you to enter a license plate, so while this won't give you a 100% accurate answer, this will put you in the ballpark.

Gathering this information would also give you a starting point for the diminished value claim with the insurance company.

 

[kglpdx]

Went on Carfax and input my vin without an accident and received a $22,000 quote.
Went through again and checked "serious accident" not fender bender and it was $21,800. That seems crazy.
I guess I'll wait it out for the repairs and hope these types of offers are still out there in a month.

Thanks again for the tip. I wouldn't have thought they'd buy cars that have been in accidents, so my Sunday is looking up some.

Meanwhile the search begins for an elusive red one to replace this.

 

[RisingFallens]

I would think that it would take a little bit of time before CarFax showed your accident, so you’ll probably have to tell anyone that is curious

 

[kglpdx]

I would think that it would take a little bit of time before CarFax showed your accident, so you’ll probably have to tell anyone that is curious

When you go through the Carfax, etc process, they ask if the car has been in an accident or not. Some of them asked how much the repairs were, others didn’t.

 

[Dnkltd]

Also had two dealers tell me that CarMax is paying crazy $ right now.

 

[cb1111]

everybody is paying crazy numbers these days. What are you going to instead?

That $9k estimate is far too low. I'm betting on $12k at a minimum - unless it is at an insurance suggested body shop - they all have agreements that they'll do the repairs at the estimate price - but - the only way they can do that is by cutting corners.

Carvana does a very cursory inspection in your driveway before you sign papers and the hand you a check. If you're upfront with the accident damage, then I suspect it'll be quite seamless.

 

[Desslok]

You just have to crush the back wheel to match the front and sell it to some stance bro for 20k.

 

[kglpdx]

That $9k estimate is far too low. I'm betting on $12k at a minimum - unless it is at an insurance suggested body shop - they all have agreements that they'll do the repairs at the estimate price - but - the only way they can do that is by cutting corners.

I had it towed to the VW dealer body shop because they had just done some detail work for me and did a good job. Is a dealer shop a bad choice?

The estimate has several recycled parts listed from a junkyard. I’m already planning to tell the insurance company no to that.

 

[cb1111]

I had it towed to the VW dealer body shop because they had just done some detail work for me and did a good job. Is a dealer shop a bad choice?

The estimate has several recycled parts listed from a junkyard. I’m already planning to tell the insurance company no to that.

You don't have much choice with aftermarket/recycled parts with GEICO. If you read your policy, then you'll see that you agreed to that - but - a good body shop (not affiliated with the insurance company) won't be able to find used or aftermarket parts that are suitable.

Body shops affiliated with dealerships can be good or bad. The problem is body shops that have agreements with insurance companies as they agree to do the repairs based on the adjuster's estimate and you have to be extremely pushy to make sure that no corners are cut. I ended up taking one repair (before I learned that, I figured that the insurance shops had to be good) to a different shop for an estimate to fix the "cut corners" and GEICO ended up paying - but they charged that repair to the original shop. Most car owners wouldn't have bothered.

I only noticed because the headlights weren't properly aligned and they had used flat head screws under the hood (something VW would not do). When they pulled the bumper off, they saw that the foam bumper cover support had been duct taped together and the radiator support was superglued together along with a slew of other things - the radiator support was obvious as they painted it body color after they glued it to hide the repair - the reflex silver was pretty in your face.

You'll want to start looking at diminished value now, as that all rolls into the "is the car totaled decision". You'll also want to have a talk with the body shop and say "the insurance company said $9k. I know you won't know for sure until you pull stuff apart, but how far off do you guess is the insurance estimate?"

Been there, done that a couple of times. Although you'll want to be honest with any buyer about the damage, you'll want to sell/trade it before it shows up on CARFAX - if you want to sell. There is this psychological issue with CARFAX and people think that if it isn't on CARFAX, then it wasn't a big issue - or that if it is on CARFAX then it has to be bad.

 

[kglpdx]

You'll want to start looking at diminished value now, as that all rolls into the "is the car totaled decision". You'll also want to have a talk with the body shop and say "the insurance company said $9k. I know you won't know for sure until you pull stuff apart, but how far off do you guess is the insurance estimate?"

The estimate is from the body shop. They've already taken it apart. I don't have Geico, but the person who hit me does.
I am going to ask my insurance to ask Geico if they will just pay off my loan (19K) and we all walk away. It will save the time for repairs, the diminished value claim I'll be filing otherwise, medial, etc. I just want to be done with it, get the negative energy out of my life and move on to a new car, which I already have picked out and hoping to finalize in the next few days, providing it didn't sell this weekend as I'm trying to do it from out of state. I don't want to deal with waiting a month or longer for repairs (who knows what shipping delays their may still be from covid slowdowns), then have to store it while I try to sell it to Carfax or similar.