Show HN: What's My Car Worth? | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: What's My Car Worth?

driverbase.com

19 pointsdan-jackson53 comments

I checked my car (2004 Mazda RX-8), which was estimated around $8k. I actually sold through a Carvana-like service for under $1k because I got tired of listing it myself at under KBB's rec ($2k at the time, IIRC)The other online price checkers come in closer to the actual amount I received.

What's the difference between what you're doing, and why should I trust your number? Something that far out of expectations and experience, plus other low trust factors on the site[0], lead me to ditch your conclusion. Sorry if that sounds blunt - but the whole thing appeared to me to be a RNG lead gen for local car dealers who are short on inventory - the incentive is to give me a higher number so I become a lead for you.

[0] low-trust indicators I noticed: poor data curation - inconsistent capitalization (some all caps, some lowercase), multiple options for the same trim with nearly similar names. Rougher design than most modern sites. SEO Keyword stuffing at the bottom of the page. Leadgen pages for 3rd parties in general tend to be sketchy in general.

how long ago did you sell the rx-8? sounds like you should have sold it on driverbase for 8X!

it's a sellers market right now: https://driverbase.com/company/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/us...

we want to share a realistic estimate for the consumer based on market conditions (which are changing rapidly) and then let dealers make offers based on their interest in your vehicle.

thanks for the input especially on low-trust details. critical.

digging into the valuation a bit and noticed some similar listings:

here is a 2005 rx-8 for $9,000: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/6465715/2005-mazda-rx-8-in-mu...

and a 2004 rx-8 for $7,750: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/5204369/2004-mazda-rx-8-in-sh...

Just because a car is advertised for $X, doesn't mean it is worth $X, especially as both cars you linked have been for sale for over 4 months. If a car hasn't been sold for 4 months, you are asking too much.

agree. we also use recent similar transactions to generate a market appraisal. this is why we are offering an estimate but the real price discovery happens when/if a dealership makes an offer to buy your vehicle. our market value is just a reference price... dealers have a unique willingness to pay for each available vehicle. some will pay above market and pickup your car from your house without an inspection right now while others will ask you to bring the vehicle to the dealership before they will buy it and only pay fair market value after verifying it's condition.

According to this site, my 1999 base grade "poverty edition" Toyota Tacoma with 160k miles is valued at $13,295.

I realize it's a seller's market, but that's just crazy. I paid $6500 for it in 2006.

it is crazy. but true. what is even harder to wrap your head around right now is that people who bought a new vehicle last year have been able to sell this year above the original MSRP... but as a used vehicle.

My 2007 RX-8 has been estimated around $5.7k and it is slightly above of my insurer's estimation and also what I'd get if I decide to sell based on my recent research.

awesome.

I always love going to used car listings websites like Cargurus and Autotrader and having to scrub the price range all the way down to the furthest left 2 pixels because I'm not looking for a $250,000 fully specced Toyota, and if I sneeze and move the mouse too far, I get a search result with one car with a salvage title for $2,000 with 250,000 miles on it.

Oh, you're not looking for a $150,000 Ford F-150 either? Weird how they don't do something about that price range UI element user experience.

i agree the price range is wide but everyone is unique. are you thinking we should default to a low price and assume everyone is a low cost buyer? we had a porsche buyer last month request we actually increase the top end of the range because nice 911s werent always showing in the search. everyone is unique.

Use a textbox. If you want to show a histogram of prices, do that separately.

If you’re a professional, you shouldn’t be thinking “everyone’s unique.” That’s handwaving. Have a reason for what you do. You should be thinking 99% of my user demographic is looking for a car under $90,000 and trying to make the experience the best you can for the majority.

You have lots of data you can look through to help make that decision, but generally avoid just copying the larger car sites, their experience isn’t something to aim for.

I can say with great certainty your users aren’t looking for Porsche 911 GT3s, they’re looking for F-150s, Foresters, and Camrys if they’re American.

There’s the DuPont Registry for people who care about such cars.

good feedback. thanks!

I tried all my cars and the values are really high.

A 2003 Toyota Sienna with 200,000 miles isn't worth $5,500 in Good condition. I mean I wish but no. Maybe $3,000 under crazy current market environments but probably more like $2,000-2,500.

Likewise a 2006 Toyota Corolla with 180,000 miles isn't worth $7,000.

But great job OP at trying this. It's a service that's really needed.

I would suggest figuring out a way to clean up the options for the trim levels. Some are just random garbage that describe part of the car - I had one trim option that was literally "1.8L" which refers to the engine. Along with 30 other options, many of which were repeats of each other.

2 toyotas? you are rich!

here is a 2004 listed 3 days ago for $9k: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/8784108/2004-toyota-sienna-in...

or a 2003 for $5,795 and its getting a lot of views: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/7869797/2003-toyota-sienna-in...

interesting there seems to be a lot more 2004 siennas than with a 2003 model year.

here is a 2006 toyota corolla that listed 4 days ago for $12K: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/8768002/2006-toyota-corolla-i...

appreciate the input. we have several products focused on vehicle discovery and purchase but wanted to help drivers leverage the sellers market especially for extra vehicles that don't have to be replaced since it's not the best time to buy a replacement car.

we will fix the trim issue and block dealership entered trims from showing alongside our standardized trims (which makes it impossible to find the "right" one)

Not looking great as it doesn't have the option to input my car (Mazdaspeed Miata).

However if you move past that you do have the option to input your model as the MX5, MX-5 Miata and Miata. You could argue that the car we are talking about has had all 3 of those names over the years, but it makes you pick a year first, so you should know what name it has in 04.

Then you move on to the trim!

Zero options for trim for MX-5 Miata. Zero options for trim for Miata. 31 options for trim for MX-5, including ones that absolutely were not sold in 04 including "Grand Touring Manual 1-OWNER! ONLY 7K MILES!".

Really bad user experience.

Agree. We will standardize trim levels right now trims that are manually input by the dealerships are included (in addition to our standard trims) but we will fix this. Thanks!

I'm not sure where the trim level is being populated from, but for my vehicle (Mazda3) I have a list of maybe 50 options. Compared to KBB which has the 6 levels I was expecting (with a step to select 4 or 5 door prior), it's quite confusing and overwhelming. A lot of the options seem to be equivalent as well, just with abbreviations or capitalization differences. They don't seem to change the valuation much, but perhaps some sanitizing on that dropdown would be helpful.

Yes standardize trim levels. We will fix this.

I won't be using this service as it requires a VIN, for no apparent reason, other than accumulating a valuable list of people who are in the used car market. If the purpose is to accurately evaluate the resale value, a zip code would be more useful and less invasive.

Edit: I appreciate the quick response, and it does resolve my objection. Good luck!

yes agree we have a plan to move that to notify dealers step which is optional maybe remove altogether however... there are dealers willing to make an offer to buy your car without an inspection right now and at some point they will need your VIN to finalize the offer and come pay you and pick up your car. great feedback and we will move VIN asap.

right now zip code is used in the valuation...

field is hidden on step1 but displayed on step 2.

we previously had it on step 1 but moved it to step 2 because then you can change the zip (defaults to your location) but if you want to try and sell your vehicle in another state (and easily select nearby dealers to request bids from) zip on step2 allows that.

In theory having the vin means not needing to provide any option info? It’s not like a vin is secret. You can see them through the windshield… Or is there some other security / value imbalance that I’m not aware of?

we are removing VIN right now.

then you can get a free appraisal without providing any detailed information but if you are going to engage with a dealership and want them to bid on your car in many cases without them ever seeing it... then you can optionally provide this directly to the dealerships interested in buying your car.

VIN is not required to provide a market valuation estimate and we respect hirundo's privacy concern.

separating market valuation from sell my car.

Hah I tried making an estimator like this using a multiple linear regression model in a weekend. I RE'd the android app of a local car listing portal and wrote a scraper.

The problem was that there were way too many variables not annotated in the json but instead just thrown into the description tag. I manually extracted the key ones like AC, seat material etc but it was never accurate enough mainly because of this.

Maybe one day I will try again with another site or even scrape several sites for more data.

My car's value was way off. 2002 Acura RSX Type-S valued at 3.7k. These go for between 5k and 11k depending on condition.

https://carsandbids.com/search/acura/rsx

Note that the base trim is worth far less in reality, 4k or less. Maybe a bug in how trim levels are considered?

Understood. Will fix this trim issue. Thanks for testing!

Supposedly my base level 1999 Tacoma is worth $13,295 with over 160k miles. Which is unbelievable because I paid $6,500 for it in 2006.

My 10 year old lexus is valued at $0. Hmm.

we are adding a better warning when we can't provide a valuation and also improving our fallback logic to prevent this outcome entirely. thanks for sharing.

ah yes the tacoma... awesome.

check out this 1999 tacoma base for $14K with 186K miles: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/7901072/1999-toyota-tacoma-in...

or this 2000 tacoma for $9K with 319,945 miles! https://driverbase.com/vehicle/8802783/2000-toyota-tacoma-in...

you have one of the lowest mileage 1999 tacomas in the usa right now. congratulations.

even this 2001 tacoma was just listed yesterday for $10K... it looks like its been running the baja 1000 for decades: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/8804882/2001-toyota-tacoma-in...

Tacos are highly in demand as base vehicles for off road conversion.

agreed.

A car’s worth is what it sold for not what it was listed for. For my vehicle your estimate is over twice it’s actual value- no dealer is going to offer you more than the kb.com trade-in value

This summer dealers have regularly been offering more than the traditional trade values. 1-2 year old used cars are even selling above MSRP when the vehicle was new.

This is due to the new car supply shortage which is one of the reasons used car pricing is (temporarily) cranked up. Agree worth is based on actual sell price vs. listings and valuation can't solely be based on listings. The challenge is right now many vehicles are selling at list price or above (but starting to cool off in the last few weeks).

In the past few months dealers have been making record revenue and profits in this sellers market by holding firm on asking price and negotiating less especially when they have added online purchase tools to their websites that use a one price model (eg you can't negotiate).

Our valuations are a work in progress but they already do leverage several variables tied to the overall market & supply so when used car prices normalize our valuations will adjust accordingly (and to your point lots of people who bought this summer could be underwater on their used cars a few years down the road).

You have noticed everything very correctly, and you should not apologize for defending your rights. Data distortion is a very big problem.

Heya, I just want to congratulate you on launching a product. I checked my family's cars, and everything seems accurate.

The product is at least 2 years old (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19845607)

Judging by all the comments on the thread, seems really buggy for something that old.

good find randompwd! yes that job posting is old feels like 20 years ago.

we already launched a vehicle recommendation engine (https://driverbase.com/recommendation/step1) and a marketplace that is now almost up to 1 million vehicle listings without webscraping (https://driverbase.com/inventory).

this sell my car feature is new... we just launched it last week and it is definitely a work in progress: https://driverbase.com/company/update-v5681/

as you can see in this thread we take user feedback very seriously and have been actively making improvements.

cool. thank you for trying it out.

I changed the condition from good to fair to poor as well as the trim levels, and got the same price every time

in our next update we will be improving trim support and adding condition specific values.

we pushed out this initial version that collects this information but we are finding some specific trims don't have enough data yet so we fallback to a year make model zip code estimate.

i have seen both cases where trim provides a more specific price but also where we don't have enough trim specific information yet and we have to ignore trim.

condition will be factored in in our next update but we are hearing from our dealership customers that they want some more details on "condition" including damage.

one of the reasons we initially had VIN in the user flow is because we can generate a lot of vehicle condition/history information in the background and not have to require a user enter vehicle history manually however collecting VIN was clearly a deal breaker especially for privacy focused communities like hacker news.

thanks for testing this out!

please check out our new "what's my car worth" feature and share any feedback you have.

after you get a valuation there is an optional "sell my car" service where you can request offers from multiple local dealerships to get the best price when selling your current vehicle.

we are actively making improvements to this sell my car online functionality and greatly appreciate your input...

whether it's regarding issues with the valuation estimate we provide for your vehicle...

or user flow feedback like "please move VIN to the notify dealers page i don't want to share that just to get the market value estimate"

thank you!

dan

https://www.linkedin.com/in/danjackson/

I'd love some support for more european makes like SKODA or SEAT!

awesome.

hirundo:

What's My Car Worth? Sans VIN... now live:

https://driverbase.com/sell

Thank you for your feedback.

Yeah vin is a problem should be optional

thank you we just made this change: https://driverbase.com/sell

Your 2002 JAGUAR XKR is valued near $0

No. No it is not.

nice catch. we will add a more friendly message and improve our fallback logic if we cant provide a specific valuation for your vehicle maybe show a range. the XKR is legit... don't sell!

Can’t choose make / model / trim on an iPad.

will do some more testing having a hard time replicating did this happen on an ipad pro? thank you.

An older iPad Pro, but yes.

THANK YOU this helps.

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