Top tips for selling your car

Published on 1 May, 2025

How to get the best price when the time comes to get rid of your car for something newer

Overview

If you’ve decided the time is right to upgrade your car for something newer and shinier, then you’re about to face the daunting process of selling your existing vehicle. Here are our top tips to get the most money you can for your vehicle.

Wash it on the outside

It might seem obvious but give it a good clean to make it look all nice and sparkly. If you show the car to prospective purchasers and it’s covered in road grime and muck, it’ll give the buyer the impression you don’t look after the car very well – so if you can’t be bothered to clean it, will you have bothered to look after it in terms of maintenance and servicing? A good wash costs nothing, if you have the materials yourself, but at worst you could seek out somewhere that will hand-wash your vehicle if you prefer, for a small fee in comparison to the price a car will sell at.

Tidy up the inside

As outside, so within. Get rid of any junk, personal possessions and dust inside the cabin of your car, by binning everything you don’t need and then cleaning down surfaces, hoovering the mats and seats, and generally tidying it to the best possible condition you can. Think about it: if you were selling your house, you’d make sure all the rooms inside it were looking their best before viewers arrived. Well, the car is just the same. Make it spick and span inside, and you’ll get an easier sale – and hopefully a better price too.

Get rid of minor bumps and scrapes

This one is a bit of a balancing act, because if the repair work costs more than you’ll add to the value of the car when it is sold then it’s not worth it. But if your vehicle has minor dents in panels, or scratches on bumpers, or kerbed alloys, look into having them all repaired before you sell – if you can get the jobs done for a reasonably low price, you can ask for more for the car when you come to get rid of it. Linked to the first two points above, this is again a simple case of planting the right perception in the minds of prospective buyers: if the car is all dented and scratched and scuffed, with tatty-looking alloy wheels, then it’s going to look like you didn’t care for it at all during your stewardship of the vehicle, and that will put purchasers off.

Deal with any repairs, servicing or scheduled tests prior to sale

A step beyond the above, if your car has warning lights on the dashboard, or it’s due for a major service, or it’s old enough that it needs to go through its national car test (NCT), then get these done prior to attempting to sell. It will again feel counter-intuitive to spend money when you’re trying to maximise your return on the car’s value, but buyers will happily spend more and purchase a used car more readily if it is not due to have expensive, time-consuming maintenance in the near future.

Assemble all the relevant paperwork

Hopefully, you’ve been looking after the car properly up to this point and have serviced it regularly, while you’ve also addressed any repairs the car might have needed. Therefore, before buyers come to look at the car, get all its paperwork together – the vehicle registration certificate (VRC), any NCT sheets or proof they’ve been carried out (if applicable), the service book and any receipts for maintenance you’d paid for in the past. Also search out the spare key, and present all of this neatly to the buyer to show the provenance of the car. It’ll get you a better price overall.

Research prices to know exactly where to pitch

Look on top sales car sites, like Carsireland.ie and Carzone.ie, to look up the present values of your model of car – down to the specification, colour and mileage. That will give you a good idea of what you can reasonably ask for when selling your car and avoid too much tiresome haggling with any possible buyer when the time comes. If you price it fairly, you can set reasonable expectations of what sort of cash you’re going to receive and then be happy accepting an offer which is at a satisfactory level.

Shane O'Donoghue

Shane grew up in his dad’s garage in Cork, sparking a lifelong love of cars. After studying engineering in the UK, he turned to motoring journalism in the late 1990s. He now runs CompleteCar.ie and a motoring editorial agency, writing for top outlets like CarsIreland and Carzone.