Guide
How long it takes to sell a car privately
No one can give you a number for your car without knowing your market, and a number offered without it describes somewhere else. What can be described is what moves the answer, and one of those things moves it far more than the rest.
The asking price
Decides almost all of it
How common the car is
More buyers, and more competition
Where you are
Buyers within an easy drive
The season
Real, and smaller than people think
The listing itself
Turns lookers into visits
The honest answer
Why the range is so wide.
The same car can sell over a weekend or sit until spring, and most of that difference comes from things you decided before listing it.
A correctly priced, ordinary car in a city usually gets its first genuine inquiry within a few days and sells inside a few weeks. A car priced above what the market will consider can be listed for months, and the way that story normally ends is a sale below what a sensible opening price would have produced.
That second outcome is worth understanding, because it is the expensive one and it does not feel like a mistake while it is happening. Each week the listing is up, more of the people currently shopping for that car have seen it and decided against it. By the time the price comes down, the audience that would have paid it has already bought something else, and what is left is the people who wait for desperation.
Time on the market is therefore not neutral. A listing gets weaker the longer it stands, which is the argument for getting the price right in the first week rather than discovering it in the sixth.
What moves it
Five things that set the pace.
They are in rough order of weight, and the first one tends to matter more than the rest together.
1. The asking price
Not close to the most important factor: the most important factor by a distance. Price is the filter applied before a buyer sees anything else you did, which is why a beautiful listing at the wrong number performs worse than a plain one at the right one.
2. How common the car is
A popular model has more buyers and more competing sellers, so it moves quickly at the market price and not at all above it. A rare one has few of both: it can take much longer to find its buyer, and that buyer may pay well over what a general audience would.
3. Where you are
A city has more buyers within an easy drive than a rural county, and some cars are regional in a way owners forget. A four wheel drive truck and a small convertible do not have the same audience in the same place.
4. The season
Real but smaller than people think, and mostly about the kind of car. Worth timing if you have the choice and not worth waiting three months for if you do not.
5. The listing itself
Photographs and words decide how many of the people who saw the price get in touch, and how many of those actually drive over. They cannot rescue a wrong number, and they can easily waste a right one.
What does not move it
The day of the week you post. Reposting the same listing repeatedly. Writing that the price is firm. Adding more photographs of the same three angles. All of these get suggested constantly and none of them changes the number a buyer is filtering on.
Reading the signals
Reading the first four weeks.
A private sale gives feedback almost immediately. The trick is telling which part of the listing the feedback is about.
Silence for two weeks
The price is above what the market will consider. It is not the photographs, because a buyer filtering by price did not reach them, and it is not the description for the same reason. Reduce once and meaningfully.
Messages, but no visits
The price is close and the listing is leaving a question unanswered. Look at what people keep asking you, because that is the thing your listing should already have said. Fixing this costs words rather than money.
Visits, but no offers
Something about the car in person is worse than the car in the listing. A smell, a warning light, a noise, or photographs taken only from the good side. Ask the next person who leaves what decided it, and take the answer seriously even though it will be uncomfortable.
Several offers in the first days
The price was under the market. Sell it to the first serious person at the agreed number. Raising it on somebody already in the conversation is how a seller loses all of them at once and gets a reputation in a small town.
Shortening it
Three things that speed a sale up.
None of them is paying for visibility, which is often the first thing reached for and rarely the thing that was wrong.
Price at the market, not above it
A car at the number comparable cars are actually selling for sells in the first weeks. The method for finding that number is in how to price a used car, and it takes about an hour.
Say what is wrong with it
Counterintuitive and reliable. Disclosure removes the people who would have walked away in person, which is most of the time a private sale wastes, and it makes the rest of the listing believable to everybody who stays.
Tell people you know first
Before the listing goes anywhere public. It costs one message, it is the highest converting channel there is, and a good number of private cars do not reach a marketplace at all.
The other clock
Decide in advance how long you are willing to do this.
A private sale has no deadline, which sounds like freedom and is the reason some of them run for months.
Before you list the car, get an instant offer from an online buyer and write the number down. It costs nothing and it is not there to be accepted: it is there so you know exactly what the fast, certain, no meetings option pays. Every week you spend on the private sale is being spent to beat that number.
Then pick a date. Six weeks is a reasonable default for an ordinary car. If the car has not sold by then, you either reduce to a number that will move it or you take the certain offer, and either of those is a decision rather than a drift.
What this protects you from is the situation where a seller has spent two months, shown the car nine times and answered a hundred messages, and ends up accepting slightly less than the offer that was available on the first day. That happens often, and it happens to people who did not write the number down.
Read next
What decides the pace, before the listing goes up.
Most of the speed is set by these, not by waiting harder.
The whole process, in order: how to sell a car privately.
How to prepare a car for sale
What is worth spending money on before you list a car, what is not, and the hour of work that changes how much a buyer believes the rest of your listing.
How to negotiate when you sell a car privately
How to hold a price without being difficult: what to decide before anybody calls, how to answer the opening lowball, and the point where walking away is the right move.
Private sale, trade-in or instant offer
The three ways out of a car, what each one really pays, the tax rule that can close the gap, and how to work out which is worth it for the car you have.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to sell a car privately?
Anywhere from a day to a season, and the asking price decides it more than anything else about the car. A correctly priced common car usually gets its first serious inquiry within days. An overpriced one can sit for months and then sell for less than it would have at the start, because by then everybody looking has already seen it and passed.
Why is no one contacting me about my car?
Usually the price. A buyer filtering a marketplace by price does not reach your photographs or your description, so those cannot be the reason for silence. Two weeks with no serious inquiry is the market answering, and the answer is a number.
What is the fastest way to sell a car privately?
Price it at or slightly under what comparable cars near you are actually selling for, photograph it honestly including the damage, and tell the people who already know you before you tell any strangers. Those three together move a car faster than any amount of paid visibility.
What time of year is best to sell a car?
It depends on the car. Convertibles and sports cars sell better as the weather warms. Four wheel drive sells better before and during winter where there is snow. Everything is slow in the weeks around major holidays, and the first weeks of the year are usually quiet because people have just spent their money.
Should I lower the price if the car has not sold?
Yes, and once rather than four times. A listing that drips downwards in small steps teaches everybody watching to wait for the next cut. One visible reduction to a number that makes sense gets the car reconsidered by people who had already dismissed it.
Make the first week count.
A page that answers the questions before they are asked is a page that turns lookers into visits while the listing is still fresh. 10 days free.