Hi all -
I have about another five days in which I could get my car back from the repo/auction house, if I scraped together the overdue payments and towing/repo fees.
How much money do you think I'd lose by letting the car sell at auction, versus taking it to a dealer and selling it to them?
The balance owed on the car is $23,500.
Blue book value is around the same.
A finance manager from the dealer where I bought estimated I'd get around $21K from them (over the phone, without seeing the car). He seemed to be genuinely trying to advise me and said I could also shop it around to other dealers for comparison offers.
Here's my question - how much less do you think it would get at auction versus from a dealer? (I'm hoping people with inside experience might see this and respond knowledgeably, rather than just people with suppositions.)
When I asked the finance manager if auctions tended to low-ball values, he said no, arguing that several dealers can see the prices online and so if bids were too low, someone else would bid higher.
Any insiders out there with advice?
Other Related Info
* The car is a 2010 Prius, package 4, sunroof, solar roof, leather interior, 7 speaker premium sound, 4 CD/MP3, with sat nav, bluetooth.
* it would cost me about $4K to get it out of repo, register it and insure it for a month. It feels like a long-shot, or maybe impossible, to come up with that in five days but, if the auction route looks like a bloodbath, I'd try to pull off some kind of miracle.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts!