Max Branning

Easiest way is to work out roughly how long it takes you to turn your stock. So lets say you price your cars keenly and on average it takes you 4 weeks to shift a car. You will be selling on average 7 cars a month. Lets say a hopeful average £500 profit per car so £3500 per month gross. Minus expenses and Vat and tax you would probably be netting no more than £1500 per month so around £18000 a year. Realistically it could be more like half this amount so not much more than minimum wage !

Like most of the other sites that offer free advertising they dont get much traffic - thats why its free.

No.

You wouldnt need to register for vat until your turnover exceeds 80k a year so i wouldnt worry about that to start with as it wont affect you. You would basically have to pay any income tax on any END OF YEAR profits not per car. For example you may lose some money a car which wipes out a profit that you made on another one. At the end of year you would need to do a self asessment for your motor income and would pay tax accordingly. Depending on what your income is from your full time job bear in mind you could be pushed into the higher tax bracket 40%. Always a good idea to speak to an accountant and get things set up right from the outset. Oh and please dont expect to be making £2000 profit per car...After all expenses even £500 is hopeful these days ! Good luck.

When i first started out i use to go to auction buying the cheapies, corsas were my favourite at the time as they always sold quick. I would often pick up something for 400-500 quid and bung it on good old ebay for £695 and they would sell sometimes within a day. This got me going and i then started going a bit more expensive and getting better margins. The biggest problem now is with these consumer laws, its very hard to sell a car for 695 without it having a few faults or developing some fairly quickly after sale!. I dont know about anyone else here but buyers even at the cheapie price range seem much more fussy than they was 5 or 6 years ago.

I have had 1 call in around 3 months of being with them but this didnt lead to a sale unfortunately. To be fair though this is one more call than i have had with AA cars and that costs me £150 per month so looks like that will be getting dropped as soon as the 6 month contract is up..

If you are keen to do it then 5k is ample to get you started but my advice would be do it part time until you get a few sales under your belt. Start with just 1 car, maybe a car you know something about ie what faults to look out for because you previously owned one maybe and try and get a profit out of it. It takes a lot of hard work this game and a very thick skin. Good luck.

Yes but this is my point..would they actually have a case? If the customer comes back after say 3 or 4 days and demands a right to reject then fair enough but would this also mean they would have a legal right to their p,x back if it was sat on the forecourt.

Just make sure the flashing beacons work...

So just to confirm this. In the above scenario would it be acceptable to just give the customer back 2995 even though their old car is sat on the forecourt. If they demand the old car back do they have any rights at all?

This situation is just hypothetical but seeing as i take a p/x on nearly every car i sell its got me thinking regarding this new right to reject performance. If they have the right to demand a refund do they also have the right to demand their old car back, assuming its still available..

If a customer chooses to reject a car but they originally traded in a p/x do you have to give them there old car back or can you keep it assuming you havent already sold it? So lets say they buy a car at £2995, p/x price was £1000 but you now have the p/x up at £1995 Can you just refund the customer the full £2995 and keep the p/x or do you have to give it to them back if they demand it?

The problem i find sometimes is a car that comes in with say 8 months mot, would you bother retesting it before advertising it or would you just put it up at your retail price but offer a fresh mot to the customer if they ask for it?

We are looking to upgrade to a new recovery truck/car transporter (3.5 tonne) not sure whether to buy a new one or get one a few years old but they all seem to have done 200k miles even ones 4 years old. Does anyone have any views on the best make/models to be looking at? Someone has recommended a ducato because of the payload but not sure about fiats?

Mine are usually around day 3

Could this put more buyers off though? They now dont need you to supply them with the v5 ref so they can check history. A few advisories on the last couple of Mots and they maybe wont bother coming to view it..

Ok so a customer has rung me late last night and wants to buy a car without seeing it. They also want us to arrange delivery which is no problem. I have only ever done this once before and that was to a customer around 20 miles away but this customer lives nearly 200 miles away! I am a bit worried with the new consumer laws ets and whether its best to take a debit card payment or bank transfer may be better to avoid chargebacks? Any advice appreciated.

Could you not just send it to physical auction? I recently bought a lemon off of one of the online auctions and sent it to a local auction near me and actually still made £50 profit after all fees. Worth a shot.

Had a right tricky customer in today. Came bowling onto my forecourt like he owned the place and quite arrogantly asked me to "grab the keys" to a car he wanted to look at. I bit my tongue at first then gave him the keys and let him have a look round the car. I left him alone for a few minutes while i was chatting to another couple who had popped in for a look round. When i went back over to the car this bloke was looking at he was crawling around under the dashboard in the car pulling at bits of trim. I asked what he was doing and he said "im looking for the obd port" he had a small obd code reader in his hands. Now i dont know about anyone else here but i find this a bit of a liberty as he should be asking for permission before plugging anything into the car. I told him quite clearly that i dont allow people to do this, he got very taken a back by this and said either i let him check with the code reader or he is going. I had enough of his attitude by now and told him to go... Just wondered what others would do here would you just let them get on with it?

40 cars a month is incredible with only 30 cars in stock you must be selling at very low margins? And sourcing cars at that pace must be a nightmare. I am not saying starting in car trading is not possible and yes money can be made but realistically it is a lot of work and hours and cash invested for really small returns as i said go in with your eyes wide open.

Car trading is a tough business to be in these days, and will certainly get tougher over the next few years - the new sale of goods act is just one example of more obstacles in our way. If i was starting out from scratch i would certainly look for something else to be honest as the margins are just are not there any more. Most small traders with less than 20 cars are probably making no more than 30k a year after expenses and i would say many are making not much more than half of that if they are being truthful. When you consider the time and money you have to invest to this business the returns look pretty poor. That being said if it is your passion and you enjoy dealing with cars then good luck to you, just go in with your eyes wide open.

I watched deals and steals - Makes car dealing look so easy, buy any old shit from auction with odd doors and give a bit of sales patter on your driveway and your making easy bread...The rangie deal was a bit over the top.

Same here. The website they offer is good and also the 12 months free breakdown cover is a nice bonus for the customer but as for site traffic it seems very poor. I am paying 150 a month and so far have also had 0 calls and 0 emails.

James your set up sounds exactly like the one im looking at. If you do go ahead and get change of use how will this affect your mortgage on the property, i cant see many lenders being happy with this? Also the home insurance would need to change?

James thanks for this This is exactly the sort of thing that was worrying me, always red tape in this country.. What do they mean exactly by change of use? change from residential to commercial? I would assume this may cause a problem with a mortgage as well if you have one?