Looking for a great deal on your next ride? Looking for a place that won’t mark up a used car to a ridiculous price? Police auctions are an excellent way to get a police impound car for sale. You’d be surprised how many cars you pass on the freeway were purchased at a police auction. After all, who has money to spend these days? As with any bargain purchase, it’s important to do your due diligence, but in times like these, you can’t afford not to.
Police impounded cars were obtained by the local police, highway patrol, sheriff, FBI, Border Patrol, or DEA as seized property of criminals. As such, the government got them for free, doesn’t want them taking up space, so is willing to sell them to the highest bidder, often for as low as 10% of the retail price, which for older cars translates as prices under $1000. This is where many of the cars in used car lots come from, only obviously the used car dealers bought them for cheaper than they’re trying to sell them to you. These auctions happen nearly every day in every region of the country. Nowadays, many police auctions even happen online. You can get all sorts of vehicles including motorcycles, trucks, ATVs, and even airplanes.
The bidding process is much the same as with any auction. Once you get in touch with whichever police agency is holding the auction, you can sometimes find a list of the vehicles for sale. Don’t count on this, though, because each county does auctions differently. Occasionally you’ll be allowed to inspect the impound car before it’s put up for auction, but again, don’t count on this. Online auctions are often more convenient, because you can generally find all the information such as make, model, year, and title instantly without having to drive (or walk) all over town. Of course, the downside to the online auction is that it’s easier for the auctioneer to make a car look better than it actually is.
Obviously, it’s important that you only bid on police impounded cars for sale with titles, one, so you can pull up a CARFAX vehicle history report and see what sort of condition the car is in, and two so you can get insurance, which is required by law in many states. Also, you need to know what’s going to be at the auction beforehand, so you can research fair market prices and have a sense for how much you’re willing to pay for each model.
To find schedules for the auctions in your area, you can check your local newspapers or go to the website www.Gov-Auctions.org, which details most of the police auctions in the country. Generally, you get what you pay for – sites like GovAuctions, with their comprehensive databases, often ask you to pay a one-time fee of $30-50 for their services. Police auctions tend to be loud, intimidating affairs for the first-time buyer, so I’d recommend attending a few while you’re looking for the car you want, just so you don’t get caught up in bidding wars. Of course, if you’re buying online, you can bypass all that.
The biggest risk at police auctions is that you’ll receive a clunker. Some of the cheapest impound cars for sale are sold with the assumption that they’re going to be retooled by a professional mechanic before they’re in driveable condition. Unlike in a used-car lot, you are not allowed to test-drive the car before you bid on it. It can be valuable to take a laptop with you (and hope there’s an accessible wifi at the auction site) to check CARFAX reports while you bid. Despite this risk, if you’re short on cash and need a new set of wheels fast, buying police impounded cars for sale at auction can be an extremely intelligent purchase.
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