[Mike in Leeds]

After owning my Leaf for over 2 years and reading the owner pages and EV blogs, I thought the 2nd hand market for Nissan Leafs was vibrant and there was plenty of demand for them. SO i decided to sell mine because I needed to do more long distance journey's and thought it would be pretty straight forward.

Sadly, I've had my Leaf advertised on the Classified section of this website AND Autotrader. I've had 45 views of my advert on Autotrader in 5 days and a few of them have been me. On the Classified section on SpeakEV, I've had plenty of page views but no interest.

I wonder if i've overpriced the car. It's a 2014 (64 plate) Leaf 24 with the 6.6kw charger, 12 bars of health with 51,300 miles on sale for £8500 or nearest offer.

Is that too pricey? Any advice on selling would be greatly appreciated.

 

[DrEskimo]

5 days isn't very long...!

Last car I sold privately I had a couple of calls in a month, but nothing serious. Then around 5weeks later call on Friday, viewed Saturday and sold Sunday.

Price looks fine to me, you'll probably be haggled for £500 off by any serious buyer so that should make it a good buy for someone.

GLWS!

 

[halcyonrichard]

5 days is not a long time at all. More likely it will take a month. Do not forget it is holiday season as well.

 

[Mike in Leeds]

5 days isn't very long...!

Last car I sold privately I had a couple of calls in a month, but nothing serious. Then around 5weeks later call on Friday, viewed Saturday and sold Sunday.

Price looks fine to me, you'll probably be haggled for £500 off by any serious buyer so that should make it a good buy for someone.

GLWS!

I had been led to believe that the 2nd hand market for Nissan Leaf's was really good, but I appreciate it's only been 5 days and it is the summer holidays so people are probably going to be away on holiday too!

I just wonder if being a private seller means people are less likely to buy, but we'll see.

 

[ringi]

I wonder how many more 2nd hand EVs we will see in the market due to the Model 3 starting to arrive in the UK.

 

[DrEskimo]

I had been led to believe that the 2nd hand market for Nissan Leaf's was really good, but I appreciate it's only been 5 days and it is the summer holidays so people are probably going to be away on holiday too!

I just wonder if being a private seller means people are less likely to buy, but we'll see.

Nah always buyers for private sale. I am more than happy to buy second hand if the car is right, and more importantly, the price is right! Lots of very overpriced cars from private sellers, so just be sure you are competitive against dealers.

 

[Mike in Leeds]

Nah always buyers for private sale. I am more than happy to buy second hand if the car is right, and more importantly, the price is right! Lots of very overpriced cars from private sellers, so just be sure you are competitive against dealers.

It's tricky to judge, but I think I'm about right. Mine is certainly cheaper than a dealer's price. I'm expecting to be haggled down, but as long as people are sensible with their offers, then I'm happy to think about any offer.

Fingers crossed I get some interest soon!

 

[proddick]

It is higher mileage than a lot of Leafs so your price might be a bit high. The risk with pricing at the top end is that you get no interest and then end up with one low offer. Often it is better to price competitively and get lots of interest so you can genuinely tell people you won't take offers. However, it is holiday season so there may not be many people looking for cars.

Another approach would be to see if an EV specialist would sell on a commission basis, but that only works if you have another car to drive. I did that with my Ampera late 2017 and after their costs and some minor repairs, I still got more than I would have asked for a private sale! However, that may have been a fluke as good Ampera were (and still are) rare.

Take car with buyers (there are some crooks out there) and don't forget that your car won't be covered if they drive it and have an accident - the most their insurance will provide is 3rd party cover.

Good luck!

 

[JED]

I've had my Leaf advertised on the Classified section of this website

How is this accessed please? Just tried to find it without success.

 

[Mike in Leeds]

How is this accessed please? Just tried to find it without success.

Here is a direct link to the advert on the Classified page of this website (SpeakEV)
Link Here

 

[Peter Owen]

I think the mileage might be a biggie here. In general terms EV prices seem pretty strong because demand is outstripping supply but there are a lot of low mileage EVs out there. Rightly or wrongly people look at a 5 year old EV with a big mileage and think this may not last the pace. A 24 kwh Leaf will struggle to do more than 80 miles and, if it is old and high mileage, it may be on the way to losing the first capacity bar knocking the mileage down to 60.I'll be honest, I wouldn't pay £8,500 for a high mileage 5 year old Leaf.

 

[Mike in Leeds]

I think the mileage might be a biggie here. In general terms EV prices seem pretty strong because demand is outstripping supply but there are a lot of low mileage EVs out there. Rightly or wrongly people look at a 5 year old EV with a big mileage and think this may not last the pace. A 24 kwh Leaf will struggle to do more than 80 miles and, if it is old and high mileage, it may be on the way to losing the first capacity bar knocking the mileage down to 60.I'll be honest, I wouldn't pay £8,500 for a high mileage 5 year old Leaf.

I thought 10,000 miles a year was about average, but maybe not. I am open to offers though!

 

[Mike in Leeds]

I think the mileage might be a biggie here. In general terms EV prices seem pretty strong because demand is outstripping supply but there are a lot of low mileage EVs out there. Rightly or wrongly people look at a 5 year old EV with a big mileage and think this may not last the pace. A 24 kwh Leaf will struggle to do more than 80 miles and, if it is old and high mileage, it may be on the way to losing the first capacity bar knocking the mileage down to 60.I'll be honest, I wouldn't pay £8,500 for a high mileage 5 year old Leaf.

Forgot to mention that I am also offering SpeakEV members a discount so my SpeakEV classified listing shows a price of £8250

 

[StEVG]

I thought 10,000 miles a year was about average, but maybe not. I am open to offers though!

Just a thought, have you checked out what you would be offered by car buyers like “We buy any car” etc?

 

[i-s]

I had the same problem.

I listed my leaf for sale in May when I ordered my 3. Went away on business so was a bit tentative and was hoping for the best price. At that point there were about 300 used Leaf on AutoTrader. When I got back at the beginning of June I listed on AutoTrader and lowered the price several times until I was only £400 above the WBAC offer. I ended up doing a deal with an EV dealer for £150 over WBAC. It's still listed on their site, now at £1300 over what they paid me for it, but it's still for sale. There are currently over 640 used Leaf on autotrader, so availability has increased and that's putting downward pressure on prices.

It's not inconceivable that this sudden increase in the number of used Leaf for sale is due to the model 3 - I know that I'm not the only one who traded up, and 300 leaf owners being among the first 3k model 3 owners does not seem outside of the realms of possibility.

Check the WBAC price and ask some of the EV specialists like drivegreen, weareev, etc what they would offer you for the car - you might find it's not worth the hassle to sell privately (when you might manage a couple of hundred more than the dealer offer). I was surprised at how high the wbac price was, since when I sold my Volvo in January they were over £2k below what I got privately. In the Volvo case it was worth the hassle, in the Leaf case it was not.

 

[Mike in Leeds]

I had the same problem.

I listed my leaf for sale in May when I ordered my 3. Went away on business so was a bit tentative and was hoping for the best price. At that point there were about 300 used Leaf on AutoTrader. When I got back at the beginning of June I listed on AutoTrader and lowered the price several times until I was only £400 above the WBAC offer. I ended up doing a deal with an EV dealer for £150 over WBAC. It's still listed on their site, now at £1300 over what they paid me for it, but it's still for sale. There are currently over 640 used Leaf on autotrader, so availability has increased and that's putting downward pressure on prices.

It's not inconceivable that this sudden increase in the number of used Leaf for sale is due to the model 3 - I know that I'm not the only one who traded up, and 300 leaf owners being among the first 3k model 3 owners does not seem outside of the realms of possibility.

Check the WBAC price and ask some of the EV specialists like drivegreen, weareev, etc what they would offer you for the car - you might find it's not worth the hassle to sell privately (when you might manage a couple of hundred more than the dealer offer). I was surprised at how high the wbac price was, since when I sold my Volvo in January they were over £2k below what I got privately. In the Volvo case it was worth the hassle, in the Leaf case it was not.

Thanks for the perspective. WBAC is £6600. Autotrader values it about £7700. I've got it on the classified section on here for £8250. I don't think that's massively unreasonable, but I guess valuations vary from peoples perspective.

 

[i-s]

Fair enough. More of a spread for yours - my wbac price was 10500, AT valuation was 11ish, didn't sell on AT or here at various prices in the £11k range, ended up selling for 10650 to the dealer because I needed the cash in place for whenever my 3 shows up (next week, I'm told). I think your price is reasonable and shouldn't be a difficult sell as it is right at the bottom for a battery owned gen 2, which means there's little room for people to talk you down.

A little constructive criticism, if I may be so bold:

Your pictures are generally good, and better than most on AutoTrader. However, remove the child seats (people will assume that kids have damaged/scuffed/smeared/etc) and empty all of your personal items from the door bins (moam, sunglasses, books, etc) - you have to think of it as not your car anymore, remove and scrub away any sign that you were ever in it. Put up pictures of all 4 wheels including tyres (current one is cropped) - you've got 20 pics to use on AutoTrader so use them all. Make sure you have a picture of front, back, each side, front 3/4 left and right, a picture into the cabin from each door.

In terms of your description, remove the phrase "well used", and remove "budget" from the tyres, don't give the label ratings for the tyres. Don't say you're changing for a car that can do long journeys because you will put in the buyer's head that this can not.

Here's my thread from trying to sell my leaf here, just to give a example of what I'd suggest https://www.speakev.com/threads/2015-nissan-leaf-tekna-24kwh.138830/#post-2611492

 

[TheWongs]

My 14 plate Acenta with winter pack is now on 69k miles and 11 health bars (83% SOH as from last week). I bought it last year with 60k miles and 12 health bars and paid £7800 from Hanley Nissan in Stoke. It looks like I was quite lucky to buy at that time and the prices have gone up a little.

Although I've never worried about any car's mileage in the past, I suppose it's a little different with EV's and buyers would possibly assume that it's "worn out" due to lack of knowledge more than anything else. It seems that every ICE owner that I talk to about the Leaf worries about the battery needing to be replaced and how much a new battery costs. That conversation is straight after the first (and most annoying) conversation about how far it goes on a charge and how long it takes to charge. It seems to be stuck in the minds of everyone that they need to have something that goes at least a few hundred miles, even if they only do about 20 miles every day.

I would imagine that when the general population understands more about EV's and come to the conclusion that they could actually get to work or the shops and back, they would be a lot easier to sell.

 

[i-s]

Looks like it sold? Did you get what you wanted for it?

 

[Mike in Leeds]

Looks like it sold? Did you get what you wanted for it?

It's not sold. Autotrader advert just expired so I'm waiting till after the bank holiday to re-advertise.
I've only really had speculative enquiries and a couple of timewasters. I was always expecting to haggle and accept a price lower than my advertised price, but i've had a couple of stupidly low offers that makes me wonder if i'm better off pushing hard for a good part ex price instead, as the public seem to be taking the mick a little.

Either way it's still for sale.