In addition to keeping up our stock of cars from auction and wholesale dealers, we accept customer trade-ins. Especially in these days when there is a huge shortage of used cars.
We pretty much take anything. There's no specific criteria other than it shouldn’t have a big payoff and if the person's upside down without any money to offset that.
But even if the car's got a rebuild or salvage title, we’ll take it on a trade in, but cut the value of it in half.
The process for accepting a trade-in is fairly easy. When someone comes in to look at buying a car or other vehicle from our inventory -- say they're going through the application process – we’ll go out and look at their vehicle, appraise it, and drive it and basically see what it's worth. I’ll place a value on the trade in, like I would if I were looking at cars at auction -- I'm going to put an actual cash value on that car. For example, if I think that I'd pay $7,000 for this car at the auction, that's what I’ll give them in trade in for it.
Of course, they should have a clear title. If they still owe on it and the lender holds the title – if the money they owe is within that range, that I can help with the payoff. When that is done, they send us the title and we can trade them for it.
We also buy cars from people. We have a digital message board sign, and we’re always advertising that “We buy cars, we buy cars.”
The process is the same as trading in, except that they get cash and don’t get a vehicle from us.