Buying a "flipped" car?

[jtfreels]

Couple of weeks ago I was trying to investigate an out of town car, while I'm trying to get it looked at the car gets sold. That was OK, the seller had been clear to me that someone was ahead of me (thats happened alot to me!).

Now I find that the car is up for sale again, the price is still reasonable for the car, I've not yet contacted the seller.

How do I handle this, let the seller know I was after the car?
Be quiet and let him tell his story and see how it matches what I know?

All in all the car appears to be good and the price is still in my range, should I even care?

Let me know your thoughts.

Jay

[imcarthur]

Originally posted by jtfreels
All in all the car appears to be good and the price is still in my range, should I even care?

No If you still want it, his story doesn't matter. Make sure you send it for a PPI though. Maybe he found something nasty & wants to bail.

Ian

[Todd Simpson]

Be quiet and let him tell his story and see how it matches what I know?

That's what I would do, out of curiousity if nothing else.

If he flips cars on a regular basis it's probably a best case scenario. I'd be worried if he bought it to keep and then quickly decided to sell.

Either way do all the due diligence you nornally would, PPI, Carfax, check the records.

I am curious if he ever took title to the car. If not, he's avoiding the sales tax and states usually don't care much for that....time for a seperate thread.

[aigel]

#1 rule in car buying: Never let a seller know what you know or what you think. The very worst would be to show excitement. In this case, just act as if you do not know the car and take it from there.

As Todd said the worry here may be that he actually bought the car for himself and found some serious flaws with it. If he is only flipping it for some extra dough, it probably is the lesser worry. It's a free market after all and if it is a fair price in your eyes, then it's okay.

If he is untrue about what's up with the car or worse, if he is skipping title, I'd call him on it. I hate people that lie to me. If he is skipping title, I would report him to the DMV.

George