Sell your car for more
Prepare Your Vehicle For Sale
Buyers don’t pay for the car you’ve owned.
What's Your Car Worth?
Takes 30 seconds-
Selling privately could get you - more than instant buyers
First, put your reg in and see the car’s real numbers. Private sale, part exchange and instant buyer sit side by side, so the gap between them is plain to see. In short, that gap is what preparation plays for.
They pay for the car they can see.
Every valuation assumes an average example, because average is what most cars look like on the day someone decides to sell. The distance between average and clearly cared-for is therefore the cheapest value you will ever add to a car, and closing that distance is our job. So check what the car is worth first, then decide how far to go to sell your car for more.
The maths of it
Every mark gets priced twice
A scratch never costs you what it costs to fix. Instead, it costs whatever the buyer decides it says about the car. That is the whole case for preparation, so here it is straight.
Instant buyers mark to a checklist
We Buy Any Car, Motorway, Cinch. The online quote is the best case, because the inspection exists to close the gap. Every scuff, stain and ding on their sheet is a deduction, so a prepared car simply gives them a shorter list to work with.
Private buyers price the doubt, not the flaw
A tired interior doesn’t read as a £120 valet. Instead, it reads as a car that has been treated like this everywhere you can’t see. Nobody negotiates that feeling down item by item. They knock hundreds off, or they stop replying.
Part exchange is priced at their labour rates
The dealer values your car at what it costs them to make it retail-ready, at their hourly rate, with their margin on top. So arrive with the work already done, because then there is less on the list for them to charge you for.
The photos are what sell a car for more
Scroll the listings for your own model and watch what you do. A car that looks freshly detailed will sell for more, and sell faster. Meanwhile the dusty ones sit for weeks, take the low offers, or both. Of course, your buyers are doing exactly the same scroll.
Three ways in
Match the prep to the car
A £4,000 runabout and a £40,000 estate deserve different budgets, so we do this at three levels. All of them mobile across Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire, or at the studio at Brighton City Airport.
The refresh
MAX Maintain
For a car that’s already looked after and just needs to look it on camera. In short, a proper wash and interior once-over that takes the everyday film off the whole car, inside and out.
£120 +VAT. About 90 minutes.
Most sellers choose this
The MAX WAX
The full inside-and-out job. Interior deep cleaned, exterior washed, decontaminated and finished, so the car photographs like one that has been cared for since day one.
£300 +VAT. About half a day.
The strongest listing
MAX WAX Prestige
Our deepest preparation. Detailing rather than valeting, for cars with real value to protect, because at this level the difference between clean and immaculate is measured in hundreds of pounds.
£600 +VAT. A full day.
Not sure which level would help you sell your car for more? Send us photos on WhatsApp first, and we’ll tell you straight, including when the honest answer is the cheapest one.
Beyond cleaning
The marks that cost real money
Cleaning changes how the car reads, but these fix the things a buyer can point at. Each one has its own page, and most of them can also be folded into the same visit as the valet.
Dents
Paintless dent removal from £80. A door ding is the easiest “knock £300 off” a buyer will ever spot, yet it usually comes out in under an hour.
Scuffs, scratches and kerbed alloys
MAX PAINT is our paint and wheel side, so you get colour-matched repair with a detailer’s eye, without body shop prices or body shop timescales.
Dull, swirled paintwork
Paintwork correction takes the wash marks out of the clear coat instead of glossing over them. Indeed, it is what makes ten-year-old paint photograph like new.
The engine bay
A clean engine bay quietly tells every viewer the car has been looked after by someone who cares. After all, it is one of the first places a knowledgeable buyer looks.
Damp and odours
A musty smell ends sales on the doorstep, so if there is moisture or mould anywhere in the car, that is the first thing to put right, not the last.
Before you book anything
When it isn’t worth it
Preparation is an investment, but not every car returns it, so here is how we’d call it.
Low value, straight to the trade
If the car is worth a couple of thousand and it’s going to an instant buyer this week, a £600 detail will not come back to you. However, a Maintain and half an hour with a phone camera in good light might. If even that looks marginal, we’ll say so on WhatsApp before you have spent a penny.
Private sale, decent car
A solid car selling privately for £8,000 or more is where preparation earns multiples of what it costs. First the advert stands out in the search results, then the viewing confirms what the photos promised, and finally the buyer arrives having already run out of excuses to chip the price. In other words, this is how you sell a good car for more.
How it goes
From photos to sold
1. Send photos, or just the reg
First, WhatsApp us pictures of the car as it stands. We’ll then come back with what is worth doing, what isn’t, and a price for the bits that are. Of course, this advice is free, and occasionally it talks people out of spending money with us.
2. We do the work
Next, we come to your home or workplace, anywhere across Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire, because the vans carry their own power and water. Meanwhile, heavier correction work, and anything best done under steady light, happens at the studio at Brighton City Airport.
3. Photograph it the same day
Finally, the car never looks better than the hours after we finish, so have the camera ready. Good light, clean background, and the advert goes up while the car still has that finish on it.
From our Google reviews
Sellers, in their own words
Common questions
Straight answers
Is it worth valeting a car before selling it?
Usually, yes. Preparation typically costs between £120 and £600 and the difference in what the car fetches is normally a multiple of that, because buyers deduct far more for a flaw than the flaw costs to fix. However, the honest exception is a low-value car going straight to the trade, where a light refresh or nothing at all can be the right call. So send us photos and we’ll tell you which side of the line your car sits on.
How much value does preparation add?
There is no fixed number, and be wary of anyone who quotes one, because it depends on the car, its value, and how you are selling it. Still, from doing this since 2004 we can say that a decent car, properly prepared and sold privately, will sell for more, and the return is commonly several times the cost of the work. On a £2,000 car sold to an instant buyer, however, it may add very little.
Can you make an old car look new?
No, and we won’t pretend otherwise. What we can do instead is make a ten-year-old car look like a ten-year-old car that has been genuinely cherished, which is exactly what a used buyer is hoping to find. Meanwhile, marks that have gone through the paint, torn trim and kerbed wheels are repair jobs, and our MAX PAINT side handles those.
Will you tell me if it’s not worth doing?
Yes, and it happens regularly. The advice on WhatsApp is free, so if the car or the sale route doesn’t justify the spend, we’d rather say so than have you feel it didn’t pay. After all, people remember that when they come to sell the next car.
Do you come to me?
Yes. We cover Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire with vans that carry their own power and water, so home or workplace both work. However, deeper preparation and paint correction are better done at the studio at Brighton City Airport, and we’ll tell you if your car would benefit from coming in.
How close to selling should I book?
Book so the work finishes a day or two before you take the photos, and keep the car dry and unused in between if you can. After all, the car never looks better than the day we finish, and the advert should be built on that day.
I’m handing the car back to a lease company. Same thing?
Different job with a different aim. Sale preparation is about helping the car sell for more. Lease return preparation instead targets only the things the inspector is allowed to charge you for, and skips everything else. That has its own page: our lease return preparation service.
See the numbers before you decide
The valuation is instant, the advice on WhatsApp is free, and either one might tell you to spend nothing. However, when preparation does pay, you’ll know exactly what to book to sell your car for more.