Autotrader valuations vs. asking prices

[six wheels]

I’m looking at hot hatches around £10-12k. Mainly Megane Cup’s but recently also Astra VXRs.

I get the used car market is crazy. And I get that cars sell for their sale price, not necessarily the asking price.

By way of example: I’m seeing a car listed for £11k and if I put the registration and mileage into the Autotrader it suggests an asking price of £7.5k.

That seems a huge difference but fairly consistent.

Is this normal? Factor of the market? Something about hot hatches?

Thoughts welcome.

[six wheels]

How rude.

I meant thoughts welcome and input appreciated!

[PH User]

How does it compare to other similar cars? That's your value, not what a website says.

[Ilovejapcrap]

You can go on eBay and see What stuff sold for best way of gauging true figures I’d say.

[six wheels]

PH User said:

How does it compare to other similar cars? That's your value, not what a website says.

Yeah, I suppose.

Values can be somewhat all over the place.

[six wheels]

Ilovejapcrap said:

You can go on eBay and see What stuff sold for best way of gauging true figures I’d say.

I didn’t know you could do that. Great tip, thank you.

[plenty]

Ilovejapcrap said:

You can go on eBay and see What stuff sold for best way of gauging true figures I’d say.

Bear in mind that's only for auction-style listings and therefore skewed to examples at the lower end of the market.

Collecting Cars is a fairly decent barometer, albeit it's skewed to rarer/premium models and you have to actively monitor the listings as they don't publish sale price after the end of the auction.

[Jamescrs]

I think Autotrader's valuation system is all over the place personally, I wouldn't take it to be accurate.

For example I was recently looking for a Boxster and when I was on Autotrader I could see two cars with near identical spec, age, mileage etc and very close pricewise and it would say one was overpriced and the other was average price, I found similar variations on their site looking at other options, specifically Audi TT's.

I started thinking the site algorithms favoured some dealers with their valuation scales, I don't pay any attention to it now.