Get access to the same vehicle valuation tool that dealers rely on. With Black Book, you’ll have insider data to accurately assess trade-in and purchase values—empowering you to negotiate the best possible deal.
Deal School is an entirely free online curriculum that is intended to teach you the bare minimum of what you should know before you buy a car. Taught by Ray and Zach Shefska, Deal School is two and half hours of video content, plus six quizzes to test your knowledge along the way. The goal of Deal School is to help you better understand the car buying process, and how car dealerships operate.
Why did you create Deal School?
Deal School was born out of frustration. Frustration that buying a car is so challenging. As the CarEdge YouTube channel began to grow, we realized that we could help a lot of people by simply organizing our content into a logical progression. With over 100 videos on YouTube, it can be hard to find the exact topic you are looking for. With Deal School, you can simply glance at the curriculum, find the topic you’re interested in, and jump right there. We created Deal School so that when people ask us “How can I negotiate a car deal?” We can simply link them to Deal School, and know that they are getting a good answer. We hope that if a friend or family member ever asks you about how you bought your car, you’ll tell them about Deal School as well.
What’s the catch?
There’s no such thing as a free lunch, right? So what’s the catch? If there is a “catch” it’s that you have to sign up with an email address to access Deal School. Otherwise, there is no “catch.” We’ve disabled advertisements on Deal School videos, so you won’t be interrupted by those. Instead, you should be able to click through video to video and focus on learning.
Why do we want your email address? Because in the not too distant future we are going to have products that we are going to sell. Those products will help you navigate the car buying process, and we’ll try to make money from selling them. If you sign up for Deal School with your email address, then we have a way to contact you in the future when we have products to sell (and other free resources too).
How long will Deal School be available?
There is no “expiration date” on Deal School. My dad and I will most likely need to update the course materials in a year or so (as dealership practices change), but aside from that, what you see is what you get, and it will be that way into the future.
What will I learn from Deal School?
Deal School is broken into six core lessons:
How Car Dealerships Operate
Initial outreach to the dealership
How to select a car
How to negotiate a car deal
Choosing how to pay for the car
What to expect in the F&I office
Each lesson has a varied number of topics within them. Topics have associated videos and course materials (blog posts, other video, other resources, etc.).
In total there are 50 videos that are a part of the course.
What if I want a different course?
As of right now, Deal School is the only course we have available. We’re very interested in producing more, so if you feel strongly about another topic (for example an entire course dedicated to financing a purchase), then please let us know. How should you let us know? Take a look down below!
How can I share feedback?
Your feedback is invaluable. CarEdge has become what it is today thanks to you. To share feedback with us about Deal School, please complete this short survey: https://caredge.com/deal-school/survey/
Today Ray and Zach discuss the current state of the used car market. If you’re thinking about buying or selling your used car, you’ll definitely want to watch this first. New data from Black Book and Manheim provide insights into the current and future state of the used car market.
You want to sell your car, but you’re not going to let go of it easily. It’s always worth the effort to sell your car for the most money possible. Once you’ve made the decision to sell, another question comes to mind: “where should I sell my car to get the most money?”
If your goal is to get the most money when selling your car, then be prepared to do a bit of work. If you’re more interested in convenience, then have no fear, there are plenty of people out there who want to make it easy to buy your car from you.
Get the most when you sell your car.
Compare and choose multiple offers in minutes:
CARWISER LETS YOU COMPARE & CHOOSE MULTIPLE OFFERS IN MINUTES.
This should only take about 3 minutes.
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Let’s run through the three different categories of car buyers, get into the specifics of what work you will need to do to sell your car to each of them, and cover the pros and cons of your varied options. Let’s dive in!
The Middle Ground: Sell to a Car Dealership
There is nothing wrong with selling your car to a local dealership. Will you get the most money possible? No. Will you have the most convenient experience possible? Probably not. Will you get the worst possible price for your car? Definitely not. Will it be the least convenient experience for you? Most likely not.
Selling your car to a local dealership is the ultimate middle ground of car sales. It’s an option, it’ll always be there, and it isn’t great, but it isn’t bad either.
What work is involved in selling your car to a local dealership? Not much. Don’t spend hundreds of dollars getting the vehicle cleaned, detailed, or looking “showroom ready.” The used car manager that appraises your vehicle won’t be swayed by how good the car looks, and they’ll still be thinking about the reconditioning work they’ll need to do to make the vehicle “merchandisable” (sales ready).
Selling to your local car dealer is convenient in this sense. Simply call them, make an appointment to get your vehicle appraised, and have the necessary documentation with you to complete the transaction (more on that below).
Understand that the offer you get from your local dealer will most likely not be top dollar for your car. Quite frankly, it could be the lowest offer you get. Local dealerships typically never offer what the national used car dealers do (more on them next), and although there is less work involved, offers from local dealers are typically much less than what you would get if you sold your vehicle to a private party (stay tuned).
If you’re still asking yourself, “Should I sell my car to a local dealer?” I’d caution that you shouldn’t. I think you’ll find one of the other two options more attractive for obvious reasons.
The Easy Option: Sell to Carvana, Vroom, or CarMax
National used car dealers have invested millions of dollars to create “seamless” and “technology-driven” ways to buy your car. CarMax pioneered the marketing of “we’d like to buy your car, please sell it to us” many years ago, and since then, upstart companies like Carvana and Vroom have doubled-down on purchasing used cars directly from consumers.
What work is involved in selling your car to one of these national retailers? Not much. Similarly to when you sell your car to a local dealership, you shouldn’t invest time or money in cleaning up your vehicle. Carvana, CarMax, and Vroom are all prepared to recondition your vehicle, and a detail will not change the appraisal value.
What are the pros and cons of selling to a Carvana, CarMax, or Vroom? There are plenty. To start with, the best “pro” on the list is the offer price. Carvana and Vroom are notorious for offering very competitive prices to buy used vehicles. We recently sat down with Nicholas Hinrichsen, the former Senior Director of Sell to Carvana, on the Auto Insider podcast. It was fascinating to learn how Carvana determines pricing for their used car purchases.
Carvana and Vroom will also both come to you to purchase your car. Instead of driving to your local dealership, or to a physical CarMax storefront, Carvana and Vroom will send a flatbed truck to you and take delivery of your vehicle right there.
And finally, on the list of “pros” is the fact that all three major players offer seamless, simple, and intuitive online platforms you can use to sell your car directly to them.
What are the cons you may be asking? There aren’t many. The only downside to selling your car to Carvana, CarMax, or Vroom is that there is a chance you may not get top dollar for your vehicle as compared to selling it to a private party. That being said, the amount of time saved by selling to one of these big three national brands can more than make up for the price difference.
The Most Money: Sell to a Private Party
If you’re truly invested in getting the highest offer on your vehicle, then you should strongly consider selling your car to a private party. Selling your car to another individual generally requires a lot more work than any of the other options we’ve already discussed.
When selling to a local car dealer or a national used car brand, you don’t need to worry about cleaning up or detailing your vehicle. That couldn’t be further from the truth when it comes to selling your car to another individual. You want your car to be looking immaculate!
If you can get your car looking great, take professional photos, and get it listed on many different websites, odds are you’ll get top dollar for your vehicle. The cons however consist of investing your time into preparing the vehicle, coordinating appointments with strangers, and letting someone you don’t know test drive your car.
If you can look past these cons, then selling your car to a private party may make sense for you.
What you need with you to sell your car
No matter who you sell your car to, there are a few items you’ll want to have handy to facilitate the transaction:
Some sort of photo ID, usually a driver’s license
The vehicle title, proving vehicle ownership
Vehicle registration, showing vehicle ownership
10 day loan payoff, which is the amount you still owe on the car (if you have a loan)
Both sets of keys
Any service and maintenance records
As a final note, remember to take your belongings out of the vehicle before you sell it. There’s nothing worse than seeing your EZ-Pass get billed six months after you sold your car.
Today Ray and Zach welcomeNicholas Hinrichsen, who got his MBA at Stanford, started an online car retailer Carlypso and sold it to Carvana in 2017. At Carvana, Nicholas built and ran the Sell To Carvana business, and considering Zach is currently in the process of selling his Volvo S90 to Carvana, we thought what better time than now to have Nicholas on the show.
Ray and Zach discuss automotive refinance, automotive tech, and specifically Carvana’s “Sell to Carvana” program in this episode. We hope you enjoy! If you do, please consider sharing with a friend on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
Today Ray and Zach discuss negotiation free dealerships (also known as one-price dealerships). Ray explains how they work and also what impact they have on the automotive industry at large. If you’re thinking of buying a car from Carvana, CarMax, or another one price dealership, you’ll be sure to want to listen to this podcast episode first.
