30-40%. A car bought at auction for $10k would probably be listed at 14, sold for between 12 and 13. Of that, at least $1000 would be costs and overhead. Here's how we used to break it down:
10k auction price
300 fees/transportation
500-1000 reconditioning (cleaning, maybe tires, brakes, etc)
500 lot pack (overhead of property/utilities, advertising, etc)
300 sales commission
Try to make the better part of $2k off the car, so list at 14, sell at 12-13.
This wasn't a high-volume dealership. We mostly sold nice, solid car, with a lot of high-end stuff (corvettes, porsches, bmws)
I wanted to actually lay each line out on each car like this, so the customer could see exactly where the price of the vehicle came from. I thought we'd look more honest that way. I was voted down
