[larrys]

"It's a bad idea to sell cars to dealers. Their entire profession revolves around capturing the spread between car buyers and sellers."

Well a few things. It depends on the car and the value of the trade and how much time you have.. They do provide a service (they find a buyer) which can be quite helpful if you don't want to have to deal with strangers coming to your home or office to test drive the vehicle as well as other things that need to be done to facilitate the transaction.

There is also the issue of state sales tax. If you trade a car in of $20,000 trade in value you are saving sales tax in a state that charges that. So in NJ for example by trading the car to the dealer you save 7% of 20,000 or $1400 right there. Now of course you can also do what is known as a courtesy trade running the paperwork through the dealer if you have a buyer all lined up ready to go. That's not easy to do though. A dealer can smell when you need to complete a sale. I've done this exactly once in the past. The other times it wasn't possible to coordinate the two sales.

Of course a dealer makes money and can plays games with your trade. But you provide a service and charge for what you do as well.