been doing it for years..
subaru is my bread and butter, especially up here in the northwest.
have to know the whole car inside out mechancley and be prepared to overall any used car you buy just out of principle.
(I'm mentally prepared to overhaul the engine and trans if a car I buy blows up the next day) (it's happened more then once lol)
finding and sourcing used and cheap parts is also crucial, auto parts stores will kill you're wallet. time and cost of parts should.be calculated before buying a vehicle.
most of the time before buying a car I'm looking around for the parts to see if I can find them for cheap before I buy it.
say if you find a clean, NICE bmw with a bad engine, I'm looking around to source a good running engine for a deal if I'm lucky and will connect the 2 deals together. if i can't find one i will not buy the car
(STAY AWAY from anything european.unless you know exactly wtf you're doing lol, I love bmw and audi I know them like the back of my hand and can make money with them, but out of ant used car on the market they are the most deadliest to your time and money unless you know exactly what to look for.
stay away from rebuilt, salvage titles, cars that have had/need body work done on the unibody. unless you're a guy that knows and is skilled at that type of stuff but for me fvck that.
some cars I don't care about title status unless it exceptionally clean and in good shape with a stack of maintenance records.
the best deals I hunt for are cars the owner thinks have major mechanical problems, but end up being easy fixes. ie the person took it to a shop and the mechanic quotes some outrageous price for repairs the owner doesn't want to bother paying. mechanics love to lie about problems to sell pricey jobs, I've seen alot of this and works to my advantage.
example, i bought a subaru forester that was overheating and the sellers mechanic shop said it needed a headgasket job so common in subaru engines. ended up being a little hose that was leaking coolant under the intake manifold, 10 minute fix, sold car for triple the price I got it for. it ran perfect with zero issues.
the ad was on Craigslist for a week and nobody bothered to go out and look at it, guy was sort of in a rural area which worked to my advantgage since the 1000s of other greedy car flipping maniacs in the city didn't
want to waste the time driving a half hour out in the sticks to look over a car with a messed up engine. towing fees, flatbedding etc is a pain in the azz.
(unless you have your own truck and flatbed, towing non running cars all the time isn't productive.)
had my friend give me a ride to go look at it for fun, found the issue, bought the car dirt cheap, signed title in hand, drove it down the rode before it overheated, fixed the leaking hose and drove home with a very nice running vehicle. (;
all the deals I make play out very similar to above.
being able to diagnose a vehicle on the spot within a few minutes is a must have skill. buying a car that ends up having issues later you didn't know about will kill your whole life and business.
id say out of 95% of cars posted in online classfields are not profitable investments.
5% of available cars might have some money to be made.
1% of cars that are posted weekly actually have real money making potential.
the ads that pop up with a screaming deal will have 100s of emails, calls within an hour.
(you can test this with a fake ad lol)
people are money hungry and ridiculous in this market.
you have to find and discover all the little niches in the market. i myself found several that work 100% of the time and if sheer experience.
can talk and write for hours about car flipping lolol some of the funnest adventures I've had.
when i was a younger i went as far as driving 300 miles to seattle, camping in my van just so I can get the deals, but I'm crazy like that.
theirs 100s of little nuanced details you must know about the business.
you're the smart mechanic that knows everything trying to sell cars to people who know nothing about them, elderly couples, college students, single moms with cash, etc are the demographics you want to target, avoid vaping billhat wearing teenagers who know everything and are just their to lowball and waste you're time.
alot of the business is doing the leg work for the customer for an easy transaction.
you are selling something that can be the lifeline of an individual or family.
if you're working on a car that is going to be hauling a family around with baby's inside of it you better make dam sure you're not cutting any corners or lying about the problems a car might have.
people can lose jobs being late if it breaks down, get in accidents, the car can break down on a bridge and a semi truck hits it with fireballs and dead bodies flying everywhere.
a wheel can fall off and kill somebody, pedestrians, motorcyclists.. the wheel can fly into the window of a puppy nursery etc
lol just something to keep in mind always do a 100% job <3