Redbook Valuations and Pricing of Cars

Don’t get me wrong, Redbook is a very useful tool and I use it often myself.

But it is just that – a tool. Useful as a guide only.

Redbook is a pricing website owned by CarSales.com.au.

So to start with, most of the data is being fed from only one source of information.

And is that information exactly correct?

I would say not entirely and this is why:

They can only get data from sale prices.

Sure CarSales is the gateway for lots of selling car activity in Australia every year, but it is by no means the only source.

Consider CarsGuide.com.au and Gumtree.com.au.

They are both doing their best to eat into CarSales market share.

And I know for a fact that the prices seen on CarSales are NOT the final sale price achieved for a lot of cars.

So it is fair to say the data being fed into the Redbook system can be a little high.

Can you recall a time you sold a car on CarSales?

A typical scenario would be you advertise a car for say $10,000.

How ever much time goes by, you finally sell your car.

But the person buying it did a little bit of wheeling and dealing and you sold it for $9,000.

Now when it came time to remove your ad from the CarSales website, did you adjust the price?

In most cases not.

All you want is to cancel the ad so you don’t get any calls anymore.

You have your cash and you’re done!

But CarSales will measure both the time it took to sell your car from the time you listed it until the time you took the ad down.

They also see only the final price you had advertised.

Which in the example above is $10,000.

It really is an excellent guide but just for the reason above it is not gospel.

Also consider the various conditions cars can be in in any given price range.

Two cars for sale on any network at the same price can be vastly different in quality – and therefore value.

Say one has new tyres and a roadworthy certificate, but the other doesn’t and has a heap of scratches down one side.

Which one is closer to being worth the asking price and which isn’t?

This is another reason it is not possible for me to accurately quote a car’s price over the phone.

In fact last week I wrote and article on the information I require before buying a car in Brisbane. Here I explain why it is hard for me to quote without having seen a car first and the sorts of things that affect a car’s price.

Call me on 0411 362 229 to discuss what the best cash price is for your car today.