I noticed that since I bought my FXT two years ago, the price on the identical car (w/ the same mileage) has actually gone up, not down. So I decided to check out the blue book sites...These are on a manual 05 Forester XT with 60k miles. Edmunds: $11,435 Nada: $13,800 Kelly Blue Book: $18,150 Whhaaat? I've always thought that Nada and Edmunds were pretty credible. My credit union goes by Nada, for example. And the two are at least somewhat in the same ballpark, unlike Kelly which is somehow almost $7000 higher than Edmunds. How the hell does that even happen? Is Kelly only used by dealers trying to get (extreme) top dollar for used cars? Do they have any credibility? Is this the reason that every decent Subaru I find is ridiculously overpriced?
that does seem pretty crazy. NADA is almost double KBB on my '89 XT6. I'm not sure where those numbers came from, but the price on used Subarus has gone way up in the last few years. Call it overpriced, but they're selling.
Ok, I just ran Kelley Blue Book for an 05 Forester XT with 60k miles in good condition... Trade In Value: 12,925 Private Party: 14,925 Retail Value: 17,925 NADA: Clean Trade In: 11,095 Retail: 13,800 Edmunds: Trade in: 9,000 Private Party: 10,320 Retail: 11,400 Here's the thing about all those numbers. You actually WANT dealerships to use BlueBook for trade ins. Why? Because they run high. You'll get more for your trade in if they use KBB. Obviously, you don't want them to use KBB for retail pricing on their used cars. Also, never use "Excellent" condition or whatever the top condition on NADA is. You will never get it. The only chance you have of getting that value out of the car is if you never drove it on anything except wool carpet in a sealed environment. If you get nicked by a pebble on the freeway, it is no longer in "Excellent" condition. In the end, it really doesn't matter what any of those sites say. Pricing is entirely up to the dealer on retail value. If they go with bluebook and you say "Well, NADA says it should be 7k less" they will politely smile and say "Well, we use Bluebook. Sorry."
Nada is a site that gets its figures from average loans taken out on the vehicles, edmunds value is dmv purchase price records hence about 10% less then nada. KBB uses depreciation values like the goverment does as a scale. Thats where they get their figures as a dealer I always use edmunds.com and manheim auto auction history. If kbb.com comes into line with those two averages I will use that too. If you want to see what I mean with kbb being wack sometimes take a regualar car like an 02 chev malibu into there and put it with 150000 miles and one with 220000 miles and notice the $200 price difference. I know as well as most of you that the car with 70,000 more miles is worth a lot less then the other.
