Why are there so few private sellers now?

[chouffemymanifold]

The last time I bought a car was probably 10 years ago. I remember seeing lots of private sellers, IIRC about half of all listings on AT were private.

Now I'm looking for auto petrol 2014-ish Honda CRV and there are a tiny amount of private sellers on AT. Even on FB marketplace they seem to be mostly dealers masquerading as private sellers. eBay too is full of dealers, and when you look at the sold listings you see that auctions by private sellers are often a good 1/3rd off the price of dealer listings.

What's happened over the last 10 years? Is there another site I should be looking at?

[scot_aln]

Question seems to come up every month or so - But WeBuyAnyCar and the equivs have very much changed the market. Well that and the general displeasure in dealing with the unrealistic expectations in selling a car to the public.

[BertBert]

Also the used car market is dire at the moment, so even more of a disincentive for private sellers.

[clive_candy]

The last few cars I've stuck on AutoTrader have had virtually no private buyers show any interest.

If you want to sell something for £10k+ you'll get the odd call from a dealer.

Facebook seems to be where all the private action is nowadays.

[Time4another]

The thought of having to deal with general public.

[Jungleland]

Yeh interesting one. I have been thinking the same during the course of browsing AT last 6 months or so.

Is it the fact that some buyers need the value of their car realised in order to buy something?

Do private sellers seem subconsciously less trustworthy? No idea, maybe.

I think I'll try sell privately when I buy in next 6 months as I'm planning on not needing the relatively low value of my car to finance the new one. I'm sure I'll get more than WBAC or a dealer trade in (not sure if many dealers would even entertain a 13 year old Astra on 100k).

Good question and keen to heat other thoughts on it.

[Richard-390a0]

Because of incidents like this... https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

[AlfaManc]

There are so many more options to sell a car is my guess. FWIW, I have usually bought and sold privately. It requires perseverance as there are a lot of time wasters but never had an issue getting a sale within a few weeks.

Motorway, WBAC etc just remove the hassle. You save time, get the cash and can move on to your next purchase. You don't have the pain of having two lots of tax and insurance on the go if your car has not sold. You don't have buyers failing to turn up.

The other factor is leasing. Fewer private buyers means fewer private sales. Selling privately is still an option but it's just more time consuming.

[tighnamara]

Many hours back in the day of private buying / selling spent flicking the pages on Auto Trader, can't believe the price of an old copy now

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/186369065528?mkevt=1&am...