Earlier this year my registration was nearing expiration on my vehicle. Originally purchased in 2010, the month before my son was born, this 2007 Mazda3 served our family quite well. It was fun to drive, reliable, and the peppy 4-cylinder engine kept us motoring on the cheap. At the same time, we had gotten by on one vehicle before, and our garage now held the 2009 Honda CR-V that we shared in the kid’s car wash we profiled in late June.

While renewing registration is not a make-or-break budget item, it was worth considering, using this as an opportunity to not only save a few bucks that we could dump into our gas challenge, but it would make for yet another example of what Carma Services can do when we take a Carma Car like this and turn it into cash versus taking the dealer’s 7-day offer.

My process started on April 1st when I brought the car to CarMax for a quick appraisal offer. In about 30 minutes, the folks at the store were able to inspect our Mazda inside and out and gave me a written offer to buy it that was good for 7 days. Not only that, they included a detailed report of what they found during their unbiased inspection that we could then use to bolster the value of the vehicle in the eyes of prospective buyers. One last benefit was that they pulled a history report that, because I requested a copy, they printed off to again show our buyers that there had been no major issues with the vehicle in the 15 years it had been on the road.

All told, we probably received at least $100 in value between the inspection and history report simply by spending the time taking the car for their review. This is just the money we saved paying a mechanic to look it over and the cost of getting a history report such as Carfax on our own. The real value is in the additional hundreds of dollars that we likely received when a buyer could see that we had already taken much of the guesswork out of this uncertain and potentially costly buying decision.

In the two weeks that we had our family’s car up for sale on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace, we had a steady stream of interest after posted our ad which stated the following:

2007 Mazda3 Hatchback Grand Touring – $4,200 (Winfield/Wheaton)

Selling our beloved 2007 Mazda 3. Purchased with 50,000 miles in January 2010, this vehicle has served our family incredibly well over the years. Dealer-maintained at Continental Mazda in Naperville as recently as 2019, with regular fluid replacements. Records available, including a current vehicle history report.

Just had it inspected at CarMax, and they found no major issues beyond the normal rust and an airbag light that has popped on and off sporadically for the past 5 years. Check engine light was on a couple of years back and after replacing a couple emissions components at AAA in Glen Ellyn, we have passed our last two emissions tests without any problems. The A/C stopped working in the fall (we were quoted $400 to replace the part to fix it). Multi-disc player is down, but it does have an aux input for your playlist.

If not for the fact that the plates are expiring this month, I would like to hold on to her longer. Still drives well and hasn’t lost the zoom-zoom after all these years. I will miss the Bose sound system and HID headlamps that are far better than those on our newer CR-V. With heated leather and sunroof, this car feels far more luxurious than your typical hatchback. I will miss the 30-plus-miles-per-gallon on the highway, for sure. 

We decided to list it for a little over 3 times the offer we had received at the dealer. Their offer of $1500 was well below what we knew we could get for it with a little work and patience on our part. While we had many people ping us to know if the car was “still available” or make offers sight unseen (which is usually a waste of time), we did have a few people that were interested enough to come see the car firsthand.

The first two people came out to inspect the car and take a quick test drive. However, both parties ultimately lost interest after seeing the areas of rust that had developed over the years. This is a common issue for many Mazdas, but I reminded them that the Mazda brand had been at or near the top of Consumer Report’s ratings for many years now, even higher than better-known brands such as Honda and Toyota.

I was also able to provide the past 10 years of service records showing routine maintenance at our local Mazda dealership. Despite these valuable records, along with the resources I had procured during my recent visit to CarMax, these two buyers could not be swayed to consider even negotiating a price reduction.

So we went back to waiting on a buyer as we now had only a couple of weeks before our vehicle registration would need to be renewed and that was an expense that we were hoping to avoid.

With just days until the month’s end (and the expiration of our Mazda3’s tags) we received an inquiry from Rocky through Facebook Marketplace. In his introduction, he explained that he was very interested in the vehicle, but did not have the $4200 that we were asking (after dropping our price just days earlier). He let me know that since he and his wife had just welcomed their first baby the month before, he could offer $3700 at this time.

I explained to Rocky that we had just dropped the price and may hold out for an offer closer to our new asking price, but if he could raise his offer a little bit it may be worth taking a look, as we took excellent care of our car and it still ran very well. He replied that he and his wife would love to come take a look the following day to see what we could do.

We coordinated a time that worked around his schedule and he and his family came out from the city the next afternoon. His wife stayed in their car with their adorable newborn while Rocky inspected the car sitting in front of my house. Within a few minutes, we were on the road and he noted with excitement that the car really had some pep when he pressed the gas. He also mentioned a slight rattle that had recently developed from the rear of the vehicle, but I reminded him that CarMax had inspected the vehicle and noted the rust and airbag light with no mention of any other noteworthy conditions of concern. He agreed that it was probably nothing and we continued a couple more miles to give him a chance to test the brakes, steering, stereo, heated seat and more.

Since everything worked as expected, he began to talk about price, which is always a good sign. As we pulled back into my neighborhood he asked me what the lowest price I would accept to take the car home today and after a brief pause, I told him that the absolute lowest I could part with it for today was $3900. I followed that up with a reminder that I did not want to have to renew the plates at the end of the month so if we still had it the following week, I would consider his initial offer of $3700.

After I finished telling him how I looked at the price, he laughed and told me that he had actually brought $3900 so it must have been meant to be. We pulled the car up and went inside my house to ask my wife, Stacey if she could complete a bill of sale for us. She took his driver’s license and I got the mileage off the odometer and within minutes we were counting out hundred dollar bills, many of which we have been passing out since the summer in our Carma Services Gas Challenges.

Once we had all the required signatures, we removed the plates and said our goodbyes. This young family seemed genuinely excited to have a new vehicle to take home and I was glad that we had made a little space in the garage while raising some cash. I hope that our Mazda3 provides them the same level of reliability we experienced for years to come.

At the very least, they saved thousands over the dealer markup that would have followed had we taken the $1500 offered just a couple of weeks earlier. If you’re doing the math, we were able to get $2400 more than CarMax’s wholesale offer. This represents 260% more than the dealer’s offer just days after their 7-day offer expired!

This is not at all unusual when selling a car that is more than a few years old. We plan to share more stories of selling success in the not-too-distant future to illustrate just how much is to be gained through a private sale. Of course, it helps to take necessary precautions when selling an asset worth thousands of dollars and meeting with strangers that you meet online. That is where we can help you or someone you know, starting with a complimentary consultation when considering selling a used car worth under $10,000.