Hi All,

Few days back I was looking at a 1997 Honda Accord LX (51K miles) which had a KBB value of $5300, but it was for sale (private party) at $5900. I didn't want to pay $550 more than the KBB value, so I let it pass but that car got sold the very next day.

Today I saw another 1998 Honda Accord EX (92K miles) for sale at $6500. But when I checked the KBB values it's only $5300. It has some small cosmetic damages for which the dealer has asked $400 to repair.

NADA - $6925 (Clean Retail)
KBB - $5355 (Private Party - Good)
Edmunds - $4918 (Private Party)

So whats the deal with this?
So people always price Honda cars way above their KBB value?
Is anyone willing to pay $500 - $1500 more than the KBB when buying a Honda?
As I understand NADA value is the top most value that you start to deal with and mainly used by car dealers, not private sellers.
Thanks in advance

P.S. : I don't know if this is the correct section for this post. Plz feel free to move it if its in the wrong section.

 

If the 98 is an auto trans car, you may want to get the VIN# and get it to a dealer and find out if the transmission was recalled. You are out of the warranty period and many of the 98-02 model automatic transmissions were junk.
I bought my 2000 LX 5spd with 104k on it in December of 2006 for $5500. The dealer had it advertized for $7k. Keep in mind there is always room for negotiation at a car dealership.
Anywhere from 5k to 6k seems like a pretty fair deal to me, but i would never buy an automatic Accord made between 1998 and 2002 - there is far to great a risk of transmission failure.

 

Thanks for the info. I didn't even think about checking for recalls.
Its not from a dealer, its a private party sale and he's not willing to go below $6500.
I'll probably walk away from the deal since I don't want to take a $1200 loss on this to begine with.

 

Private party dealer, smeeler, makes no difference..both of them could be passing a bad car off on you.
Have that car checked out by someone who knows what there doing before you put down your hard earned money.

WheelBrokerAng