Prices in line with reality?

[88911coupe]

OK, I realize I'm going to get banned for bringing this up again but I can't help myself. Every few months I check sites like autotrader.com to see what 911's are going for and just did a quick search on '87 - '89 Carreras. The first page has a small handful of under $15,000 cars but it pretty much takes off from there and rapidly head into the $20k range. Are these cars really SELLING for these prices or is this just wishful thinking on the part of the owners? I'm also interested b/c the desire to get a 993 is not getting any weaker but I'd have to sell my '88. I can't imagine selling my car for about what I paid for it 4 years and 80,000 miles ago. Of course I sold my '87 cab for what I paid for it so I guess it's not out of the question.

[jtfreels]

Hmmm, sometimes I wonder how many people actually want to sell.

For instance, in my area a guy had an 86 Cab for 16K last year,
I took a look, not in great shape and turned out to have a salvage title. He reduced the price to $15K. Its still for sale but he has increased to $20K! After a year without selling he raises the price??

[Dan in Pasadena]

Maybe I have missed something - in fact I probably have - but oh well. Why would you get banned for asking a discussion question about the actual selling prices of a particular model car? It's not like you are jabbing someone on the For Sale board about their specific asking price. That I understand.

I can't comment on Carreras, but I can on what seem to be a popular notion that you can get good driver SC's for under $10,000. My observation is that you can't. Not in Southern California. At least, not anything I would consider a good car. Are there exceptions?, of course.

I know of an early SC my wrench was selling (not sure if he has it still) asking about $6500. Guards red, sunroof, raggedy ass looking both in and out with an assortment of bumps, bruises and torn interior, worn faded carpet, etc. I can't imagine the engine/trans were taken any better care of than the cosmetics of the inside and outside. Anyway, just my .02.

Seems like for a while there G50 Carreras were all priced in the mid to upper $20k's with a few ultra low mileage garage queens being price in the low $30k's. I don't seem to be seeing that so much in the last 6 mo to 1 year. YMMV. Good luck on the sale of your '88

[jackb911]

It's a supply and demand thing. Demand for G50 3.2's has increased in the past couple of years, and there are only so many good ones for sale at any given time. The 3.2's are arguably the last of the rawer edged enthusiast's 911's, and excellent examples are commanding a premium price now. I already miss the one I recently sold to my brother!

------------------------

Jack
'96 993 (p-car #20)

[Dan in Pasadena]

Hello Jack,
Yeah, supply and demand should dictate the prices be higher now as we both know there are no more supply of G50's coming. 2 years ago the prices on Autotrader and elsewhere were pretty uniformly in the $20k's and now you see a lot of thme in the mid and upper teens. What gives? I remember the Excellence article and all the hype about the G50's being THE 911 to have...has that buzz dissipated? I kinda think so.

[anthony]

I see overpriced 911s stay for sale for months and months on craigslist in my area. Quite often they are higher (200K) mileage cars that look nice but are priced like 80K mile cars.

[JeremyD]

I think for a quality G-50 car you can expect to pay - and people will pay in the 20's for an example.

Lots of 15-18k cars out there - but we all know that you don't maintain these cars like a toyota. you neglect these cars and that $15k deal can turn into a $28K problem pretty quickly.

[Dan in Pasadena]

Jeremy, Yes, you're exactly right. All I am saying is that I wasn't seeing hardly ANY G50 Carreras in the teens two years ago, even the semi-crappy ones.

Ask me how I know what happens when you don't pay the money up front or perform the due diligence in researching your purchase.

Love my car but I'd have avoided a lot of frustration now if I'd have spent more to start. It's true - you're going to spend it one way or another, why not avoid the frustration and breakdowns!

[trader220]

You see the same cars over and over for months on ebay and auto-trader, they're the 85 to 100k plus miles cars whose owners are asking 21, 22 to 25k, they dont sell at those prices. With patience and DD you can find a good g50 less then 20k.

I also see a lot of the same cars showing up on all the various web sites. Its even interesting to watch the usual suspects scoop them up under various bidder names and then offer the cars back on their own web sites.

[johncarlos2003]

according to a buddy who owns a small porsche lot the early 996's have currently/temporarily hurt the market for carrreras amongst others- sure, we like them and know they're awesome but the average idiot out there who just wants a porsche and doesn't do any research is happy to pick up a "new" looking one over an "old" looking one- result? prices go down as the "old" looking ones aren't getting picked up by wanna be 911 owners- the younger generation of new guys that aren't purists or studied, snap up 996's all day in the high 20's low 30's--- they just don't get it and it is lowering the prices of our cars- for now- there is such an abundance of them that we should see the market go back up after a while- especially, with all the issues they early cars are having- final note: please don't write me with all the virtues of the 996- while it's not my choice i still like them better than any other brand on the road for newer sport cars so no harm intended to 996 owners of fans- i sure do love my carrera coupe and dont really care what it would go for cause you'd have to kill me first (or force me into chapter 11)- cheers!

[Dan in Pasadena]

Good point, hadn't thought about that. I can almost guarantee that here in SoCal there a re plenty of "them" that would rather have a "new" looking 996 over, well? Almost anything! That surely must be reflected in the prices of all other 911's to some degree...well, not earlies of course.

[88911coupe]

Dan in Pasedena...my comment about getting banned was an attempt at sarcasm since there seem to have been a lot of threads lately on "How much is my car worth?" and I thought some Pelicans may be getting tired of it. I guess the bottom line is if I ever want to sell my car I'm going to be pleasantly surprised since I don't intend to ask anywhere near some of these prices.

[silverc4s]

Originally posted by 88911coupe
Dan in Pasedena...my comment about getting banned was an attempt at sarcasm since there seem to have been a lot of threads lately on "How much is my car worth?" and I thought some Pelicans may be getting tired of it. I guess the bottom line is if I ever want to sell my car I'm going to be pleasantly surprised since I don't intend to ask anywhere near some of these prices.

Buck,
One very important thing to keep in mind is that used cars rarely sell for their asking price. It is pretty easy to gather a lot of asking price data, but in reality it does not mean much, because generally you have no idea what $$ those cars actually sold for, or even how many were actually sold at all.
People tend to hold thier sales / purchase prices more closely than asking prices - this distorts your perception of what is actually going on..

Bruce Anderson's famous pricing sheets in Excellence based on actual sales data that is reported to him, or that he is able to gather on the various models. he will be the first to tell you that much of his info is extrapolated from the scarce sales data that he has each cycle.

[trader220]

Recently we switched from the straight Binomial model to the Cox Ross Rubenstein model because the CRR model has a better volatility skew for low delta options.

I am not sure what model Bruce is running and I believe he provides an interesting and valuable service to his readers but I recall reading a lot of chatter about his pricing not being indicative of the actual markets. I wonder how honest people who send in their buy/sell stats to Bruce are being.

As with any commodity, be it options or cars you can offer them at any price you like, the market may not pay your offer. I found that many eBay auctions that appear to be registered sales are in fact back on the market shortly after the listing ends with a reserve met bid. In my own experience the winning bidder on my 89 turbo a few years back said “he’d be in the area in a couple of weeks to check it out” so much for that sale.

That first paragraph was just a little options humor, you can flame me all you like !

[Dan in Pasadena]

Originally posted by trader220
Recently we switched from the straight Binomial model to the Cox Ross Rubenstein model because the CRR model has a better volatility skew for low delta options.

Have to go now, I think I are too stoopid to hang out here anymore........

Geez, whatever this means it sure sounds impressive. and I thought we were talking about old cars

[bigchillcar]

might as well drag my club-footed ass along with you, dan..
ryan

[88911coupe]

Whatever happened to "buy low, sell high"? :-))
Anyway, I appreciate the comments that asking prices don't equate to sales prices however that was the point of my initial inquiry. I guess I was just trying to get a feel for how close these prices were to reality.
Thanks,

[Huh]

I think that we all know what we want for the car and then up the price with the idea of haggling to what we really want. I recently bought a Euro SC for the asking price. I think I got a great deal because I got the set up I wanted, an extra set of 15" fuchs with V700 track tires, a new ignition coil, Hawk front pads....you get my drift. I think the buyer should do his/her homework too. As the old cliche is "a car is worth what a buyer is willing to pay"

[randywebb]

"Binomial model to the Cox Ross Rubenstein model because the CRR model has a better volatility skew for low delta options"

- It is really just the same math as in engineering applied to money... they are engineering money...

delta = deviation from an expected value, so 'low delta' means things that pretty much near expected

Binomial model -- means "we aren't smart enough to do calculus on this (take time derivatives) so we will just chop it up into discrete time slices {and hope not much is happening inside each individual slice, 'cuz if it is, we'll be screwed}

better volatility skew... skew means it is biased to one side of the distribution; volatility means deviations from the expected value or mean, so the other model is better for those types of items



Just like in martial arts, once you parse that F%*&^r down, he is easy to deal with...

[randywebb]

back to cars - I wrote Bruce A. once re the sample sizes he had and whether there was reporting bias (I got a goo deal so I send in the info; I wuz screwed so I don't let everybody know...). But I never heard back...