Guide
How to write a car listing that sells
The photographs get your listing opened. The words decide whether anybody drives across town, and which kind of person it is when they do. Those are different jobs, and most listings only do the first.
The idea
What a description is for.
The job is to make the right person confident, and to let the wrong person move on before either of you spends an afternoon.
Words like immaculate, gem and must see carry no information, appear on most listings, and a buyer reading twenty of them in an evening skips straight past. They take up the space where a fact would have gone.
What makes somebody get in their own car is a specific fact they can check: that the timing belt was done at ninety six thousand miles and there is a receipt, that it has had one owner since new, that the rear bumper was scuffed in a parking lot last year and here is the photograph. Specifics are the only thing in a listing that cannot be written by somebody who does not have the car.
That is the whole method. Replace every adjective with the fact that made you want to use it, and where there is no fact underneath, delete the adjective.
The six questions
Six questions worth answering up front.
Private buyers tend to ask the same handful of things. A listing that answers them first turns messages into visits, and cuts the number of messages in half.
Why are you selling it?
The one everybody asks and almost no listing answers. An ordinary reason, stated plainly, removes the suspicion that there is an extraordinary one.
How long have you had it?
Owning it for six years and selling it says something different from owning it for five months. Say which, and say what you bought it for if it helps.
Is the title clean and in your name?
Two separate questions and both decide whether somebody drives over. If the answer is anything other than clean and yes, saying so early saves everybody the trip.
What has been done to it recently?
Tires, brakes, timing belt, transmission service, battery. With mileage and rough dates, and say plainly whether you have the receipts.
What is wrong with it?
Every used car has something. This is the paragraph that decides what kind of buyer arrives, and it is worth more than any adjective on the page.
Is the price negotiable?
Answering it in the text stops it being the opening line of every message, which is also how it stops being the whole conversation.
Structure
What order to put it in.
A buyer scanning gives the description a few seconds before deciding whether to read it properly, so the order matters more than the length.
Open with what it is and why you are selling
Two sentences. The car, the mileage, and an ordinary reason. Ordinary is the point: a growing family, a company car, moving away, one car too many. A reason that reads as evasive does more harm than no reason at all.
Then the recent work, with numbers
What was replaced, at what mileage, roughly when, and whether you have the paperwork. This is the paragraph that justifies your price, and it is the one a careful buyer reads twice.
Then what is wrong with it
In your own words, before anybody has to ask. Naming it yourself sets its size. Being asked about it makes it bigger than it is, and being found out makes it a negotiation.
Close with how to reach you and what happens next
Say which contact you prefer, roughly when you answer, and where you are willing to meet. A buyer who knows how the first step goes is more likely to take it.
Break it into short paragraphs with a blank line between them. A solid block of text on a phone screen is not read by anybody, and a great deal of private car buying happens on a phone in the evening.
A template
The same thing as a form you can fill in.
Copy this, replace what is in brackets, delete any line that does not apply to your car. It follows the order above, so a buyer meets the facts in the order they ask for them.
[Year] [Make] [Model] [Trim] [mileage] miles Selling because [ordinary reason]. I have owned it [how long]. Runs and drives [how it drives]. Title is [clean / your exact title status], in my name and in my hand. Recent work: - [what was replaced] at [mileage], [roughly when], receipt - [what was replaced] at [mileage], [roughly when], receipt What is wrong with it: - [the scratch, the warning light, the worn tire, in your own words] - [anything a buyer would find in the first ten minutes] Equipment worth mentioning: [only what changes the price or the daily use] Asking [price], [firm / open to reasonable offers]. I am in [town or the part of the city]. [Call or text / message here], I answer [roughly when]. Happy to meet [where you are willing to meet] and you are welcome to have it inspected.
Two lines in it do most of the work. The one that states the title status stops the question that otherwise arrives first, and the list of what is wrong is the paragraph that decides whether the person who drives over is someone who already accepted it.
Wording
Six habits worth dropping.
Each is common and well intentioned, and each tends to bring the wrong people or put off the right ones.
Writing in capitals
A sentence in capitals is harder to read and reads as shouting to everybody under about sixty. It does not make the car more visible, it makes the seller look difficult.
No lowballers, serious buyers only
Almost every listing that carries this line is still negotiated, and it starts the relationship by telling a stranger you expect them to behave badly. State the price and whether it moves. That does the same job without the tone.
Runs great, needs nothing
A car that needs nothing is a car whose owner has stopped looking. Experienced buyers read this as a warning, and it is the exact sentence that makes them ask what the seller is not saying.
Listing every option by name
Power windows and air conditioning are not selling points on most cars built this century, and a wall of them buries the three things that actually matter. Structured facts belong in fields; the description is for what fields cannot hold.
Being vague about the title
Clean, salvage, rebuilt, lien, or not yet in your name: whichever it is, it comes out before money changes hands. Every hour it stays unsaid is an hour somebody is considering a car they will refuse.
First come first served, cash only, no test drives
Conditions in a listing read as a seller who has had a bad experience and expects another. Handle those at the meeting, where the arrangements are actually made, and read selling a car safely for how.
Where it goes
Cutting it down for each place you post.
What you wrote is the long version. Each place you put the car wants a different amount of it, and it is worth having one full version somewhere that the short ones can point to.
A classified marketplace gives you fields and a text area, and the fields already carry the year, mileage and trim, so repeating them in the description wastes the part a buyer actually reads. Write the six answers there and nothing else.
A local group post is read in a feed, next to furniture and a lost cat. Three sentences and the price, with the detail one tap away. Somebody scrolling will not read a paragraph, and a post that tries makes them scroll faster.
A message to somebody you know is a sentence and a link. This is the highest converting channel there is and the one people are shyest about using, and the thing that makes it comfortable is having somewhere proper to send them rather than a screenshot.
That is the argument for writing the full version once, in one place, and letting every short version point at it. Which channel does what is covered in how to sell a car privately.
Read next
What comes before and after the words.
The description brings the right person. These cover the steps either side of it.
The whole process, in order: how to sell a car privately.
Selling a car you still owe money on
The lender holds the title, so the payoff has to happen inside the sale rather than after it. How that works, what to ask for in writing, and the safest place to do it.
Where to sell a car privately
Six places a private car actually sells, what each one is good at, how much work it costs you, and why most sellers should use more than one of them.
How long it takes to sell a car privately
What actually decides the speed of a private sale, which weeks are slow everywhere, and how to tell the difference between a quiet listing and a wrong price.
Frequently asked questions
What should I include in a used car listing?
The year, make, model, trim and mileage, the title status, why you are selling, how long you have owned it, what has been serviced recently, what is wrong with it, and how you want to be contacted. Everything else is optional and most of it is filler.
How long should a car listing description be?
Long enough to answer the six questions most buyers ask and no longer. That is usually between one hundred and three hundred words. A description that runs for a page gets skimmed, and skimming is how the sentence about the service history gets missed.
Should I say what is wrong with the car?
Yes, near the top and in your own words. It filters out the people who would have walked away in person, and it makes everything else you wrote believable to the people who stay. A flaw you disclosed is a detail. The same flaw discovered in a parking lot is a reason to reopen the price.
Should I put my phone number in the listing?
Put a way to reach you, and decide which one you are willing to have publicly. A phone number gets faster and more serious contact. An email address gets fewer messages and gives you time to answer. What you should not publish is your home address: a city and a state is all a listing needs.
Does the listing text matter if the photos are good?
The photographs decide whether somebody opens the listing. The text decides whether they get in the car and drive to you. They are different jobs and a listing that does only the first one collects messages that go nowhere.
One page every short post can point at.
The facts decoded from the VIN, your photographs and your own words, on one page that every short post can point at. 10 days free.