A CarDoor truck with trailer picks up a used car in downtown Toronto. It recently launched a new car selling platform, called MarketCheck, where private sellers list their vehicles online and dealers bid on them in real time like an auction.Supplied
Selling your own used car isn’t for the faint of heart. Aside from cleaning it and gathering maintenance records, sellers must figure out what to price it at, take photos and get a safety standards certificate from a licensed mechanic for certified sales. Then they must meet with potential buyers, let them test drive it and, should the sale close, prepare a bill of sale. It is a far more complicated and time-consuming process than selling a coffee table on a digital marketplace.
However, new online players such as Clutch, Canada Drives and CarDoor are taking most of that work off your plate.
That reality hit home for Tina Sheaves, vice-president of operations east at CPKC, when she decided to sell her Sebring Orange 2020 Chevrolet Corvette LT2 sports car with only 25,000 kilometres on it.
“I’ve never sold a car before. I’m a woman. I’m busy. My schedule is not my own. I’m on-call all of the time,” said Sheaves, adding that she had to spend $500 to fix seized brakes from letting the vehicle sit. “I felt guilty about not driving the car.”
Tina Sheaves's Chevrolet Corvette in Lake Louise, Alta. To make the process easier for herself, Sheaves sold the Corvette using CarDoor's new MarketCheck selling platform.Supplied
While Sheaves loved driving her car, her hectic schedule left no time for it. So she decided to sell, but a private sale wasn’t an option. “I didn’t want people coming to my home, calling me or some yahoo wanting to take my sports car for a test drive,” Sheaves said.
She was also concerned about getting paid and personal safety, referencing Tim Bosma, who was murdered in 2013 after taking two men out to test drive his pickup truck in Ancaster, Ont.
She considered selling it to her dealership after receiving a letter saying it wanted to buy the vehicle, but she wasn’t impressed with the salespeople.
If you wanted to sell a used car a few decades ago, your options were limited: buy an ad in the newspaper or AutoTrader magazine, which involved a lot of effort, or sell it to a dealer. Digital marketplaces such as Craigslist, Kijiji or Facebook Marketplace made the listing part easier and cheaper, but the selling part was still complex. Companies such as Clutch, which was founded in 2016 and expanded to Ontario in 2020, removed much of the hassle by making an instant offer and buying the car before reselling it.
“We’re a tech company at our core so we built these large data sets and machine learning algorithms that allow us to price cars instantaneously through a simple form,” said Dan Park, Clutch chief executive officer.
The process is straightforward – enter the vehicle identification number online, answer a dozen questions and get an instant cash offer. Then schedule a pickup. “The money is in your account before we leave your driveway,” said Park. Clutch takes 5 per cent of the transaction price as a fee.
Sheaves tried Clutch first, but the retailer declined her Corvette. The platform rarely features high-end vehicles – its bread and butter is mainstream inventory such as Toyota RAV4s, Honda CR-Vs, Kia Souls, Tesla Model 3s and Ford F-150 trucks.
That prompted Sheaves to try a new approach that recently became available in Ontario.
“I asked AI, how do I sell this car?” she said. It suggested CarDoor.
The Ontario-based company recently launched a vehicle-selling platform called MarketCheck, where private sellers list their vehicles online and dealers from across the province bid on them in real time like an auction. Once a deal is struck, CarDoor processes the paperwork, arranges vehicle pickup or drop-off and provides payment. Only dealers can use CarDoor – individuals cannot buy on the platform.
Sheaves submitted her photos and online application on the Thursday night before the August long weekend. The next morning a representative from CarDoor called her to verify the details. Her first offer arrived two hours later – $71,000. But she wanted more. After another hour, she reached her asking price of $72,500 and signed the bill of sale electronically. By Tuesday night, the car was gone and the money was in her bank account.
Sheaves paid $200 to have her Corvette picked up at home in Georgetown, Ont., and delivered to CarDoor’s office in Etobicoke. She paid no fee directly to CarDoor, but the company does take a cut from both sides, the dealer and seller, when negotiating the price.
“I sold it in four hours,” said Sheaves. “I never left my house. I did not have to worry. There was no hassle. I did not have to meet people. I did not have to give up my phone number or my home address.”
Ahead of MarketCheck’s launch, CarDoor commissioned a survey to gauge Canadians’ attitudes toward the car-selling experience. Fifty-six per cent of respondents reported a negative experience selling a car, citing lowball offers and safety concerns.
“If you’re trying to sell your house, you let your house go on the market and see what people are willing to pay for it. Why won’t you do that for your car? Why not give sellers the market value rather someone’s best guess or opinion?” said Imran Vasta, president and co-founder of CarDoor.
“There’s no central hub where you can sell your car. If you want to go on a vacation, you can go to Expedia. If you want hotel options, you can go to Trivago,” Vasta said, adding that he wants CarDoor to be the one-stop shop for selling a vehicle online.
“[The Clutch] model is to buy low so they can sell and they need to make a margin on that number,” Vasta said. CarDoor is different because it doesn’t carry any inventory.
“We’re not buying that vehicle. We’re not holding that vehicle for inventory. We’re letting the market tell you how much your vehicle is worth through MarketCheck. It’s a bunch of dealers bidding for a customer’s vehicle,” he said.
“Competition for consumers is always a great thing,” said Park. “Some of our competitors don’t buy the car themselves. What they do is they connect to dealerships so you still need to go through the dealership and haggling type of transaction, which not everyone wants to do.”
What has changed since the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s is “consumers’ appetite to go through a painful sales process … People were a lot more trusting [back then]. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case,” he said. “People want a more secure, safe and certain way to trade, to transact these days.”
Park admits you can get a higher price from a private sale “on one of the marketplaces.” But that comes with inconvenience and uncertainty. “We provide convenience and peace of mind to simplify the transaction while giving you really solid value for the vehicle,” he said.
While Vasta won’t disclose how many Canadians have used the platform since it launched in early August, the company is in the midst of a hiring blitz. There are 50 employees already working in Ontario, and the service is on track to expand into western Canada next year.
“We’re getting a lot of supercars and high-end luxury vehicles,” said Vasta, noting the platform has already sold Bentleys, McLarens and Porsches. “If you had a unique vehicle, you’re not selling it privately and you’re not going to an online retailer or a random dealership. Our service works really well for the luxury market because you’re going to see all the dealers that want these premium units.”
For Sheaves, the experience provided ultimate peace of mind. “As a woman, it was the best thing ever. I did not have to deal with anything that made me uncomfortable,” she said.