Online used car market sees strong start to 2017

There’s never been a better time to be in the used car market. According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) new car sales will continue to dip by around 5% in 2017 but used cars will remain strong.

Around 2,148,050 used cars were sold in the UK in Q3 of 2016 and, of those, Auto Trader reports around a quarter were being advertised for sale online in November alone.

Using websites, as opposed to the traditional dealership, to sell used vehicles, it seems, is as popular as it ever was with the British public. Car buying websites continue to problem solve for time-poor owners who want to sell their used cars with minimal hassle and no middle man.

These days, if you haven’t got time to devise an online advert and pay for it to feature it in a classifieds section online, there are even more convenient solutions.

Websites which offer to buy any car, completely cut out the middle man and take away the time consuming process of finding a buyer for your car.

In under 30 seconds, you can go online, enter some basic car details, get an instant valuation of your car and arrange a collection (free of charge) from your home, or place of work.

Like many others, you’ll be thinking that it has never been easier to sell my car online and you would be right. If you want to just find out how much your car is worth, you can just use these sites to value your car too.

You can, of course, also scrap your car online. Car buying sites give you a scrap valuation and then come and collect your vehicle from your home and do the rest of the work for you. These companies will take all sorts of vehicles from insurance write-offs and MOT failures to abandoned vehicles or un-roadworthy cars.

A good scrap website will ensure you get an official Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) Certificate of Destruction. Without this, as the owner of the car, you will be liable for road tax and could receive a fine from the DVLA.

Andrew King is Purchasing Manager at www.sellyourjamjar.co.uk the UK’s first online car buying service, established in 1999.