Did your car get totaled recently? What do you do if your car is bad enough that it has earned a salvage title? At this point, you have a choice of what to do with your vehicle. What's the best course of action? Read on to find out why it might be best to sell it to a company that pays cash for unwanted vehicles.
1. Salvage Titles Are a Headache
When a car has a salvage title, you won't be able to operate it on any public roads, even if it's still drivable or if you have made repairs. You won't be able to use it to get anywhere.
In order to be operated on public roads, its title needs to be reclassified as rebuilt. You'll need to make the necessary repairs and have it inspected by your state's Department of Motor Vehicles. If they determine that it's safe to operate, they'll classify the title as rebuilt.
Unfortunately, they may decide that your vehicle isn't safe to drive. If this happens after you've spent a lot of money repairing your car, you'll be without a drivable car and have less money on hand to buy a new one. It's a significant risk to take.
Even if the car is successfully classified as rebuilt, you'll run into problems with your insurance carrier. Many auto insurance companies don't cover rebuilt cars, and the ones that do will charge increased premiums.
2. Private Buyers Are Unlikely to Show Interest
Because of the problems with getting insurance for rebuilt cars, many private buyers are uninterested in them. Even if you sell it to a mechanic that's able to make the repairs on their own, they probably won't want to run the risk of ending up with an inoperable car. Cars that have been totaled and given a salvage title are extremely difficult to sell.
3. Dealerships Will Rarely Give You a Good Deal
Dealerships are often more interested in totaled cars than private buyers since dealerships are typically able to either make repairs cheaply or use it for spare parts and sell the rest as scrap metal.
However, you're unlikely to get a very good price from a dealership. If they deduct the cost of estimated repairs from the vehicle's market value, you won't get very much — after all, your insurer declared the car totaled in the first place because repairs were going to be very expensive compared to its value. If the dealership decides to sell it as scrap, you'll only get a portion of its scrap value, since the dealership will take a substantial cut for themselves.
Instead, the best course of action is to sell your totaled car to a company that pays cash for unwanted vehicles. These companies don't care about the title status of the car since they're not driving them and they're not planning on making repairs. Instead, these companies remove any parts in the vehicle that are still in good condition, sell the parts, and then sell the car as scrap metal. Since they're able to extract the maximum amount of money from cars that have been totaled, you'll typically get the best price compared to other avenues.
If you're interested in selling your car for cash, contact companies such as Pick-A-Part Jalopy Jungle.