Car For Sale Simulator 2023 Prices, Customers & Lowballers Guide

The information in this guide is based on findings from version 0.1.5. The game is early access and things are subject to change as the game’s mechanics are tweaked/balanced. Check history/archive to see how the game has evolved!

This guide is best used while having the Best Price skill (third-down the rightmost skill branch), which can help you determine the exact value of your car and is very important in pricing efficiently instead of guessing. The strategies suggested are geared towards players with max bargain skill, but if you have Best Price and learn the mechanics, you can develop your own strategies until unlocking Better Bargain 2.

TL;DR: Buy good cars in a bad state for low prices. Sell as-is for profit. Don’t repair/respray/tune cars. Don’t buy $3k cars if you like money. If you’re new, $300 respray at 23%+ painted is small extra profit. Paint % is same value decrease as repair %, but paint is cheaper and instant.

—

There are many modifiers that influence the price you can buy a car from a seller. The game determines a base price based on make/model of the car, and random modifiers (mileage, damage, paint, dirt, fuel, features) are assigned to the car at the time it is sold that influence the asking price. These modifiers can make the sale price of the car drop below the base value, but the car won’t be sold at higher than base value.

Once you own the car, the car is magically worth base price and the only things that affect your sale price are damage/paint, by fixed $ amounts, and tuning, which adds 5% more than you spent. Photos/titles/dirtiness/fuel do nothing. 100% damage + 100% painted will make the car worth $2,850 less than base, each contributing to -$1,425 base at 100% worst. Tuning adds cost spent tuning + 5% to base. So if you spend $1,000 tuning, the car will be worth $1,050 base more. You can only reliably sell cars for up to 1.15x-1.2x base with max bargain.

Profit is driven by buying good cars in a bad state for low price. Repair/painting/tuning with max skills will earn $2-3k profit at best. Spend that time buying more dirty junk cars to sell. Tune for fun, not for profit. Buying highly damaged/painted cars under $5k will likely lose you money or make you break even unless you have max bargain and cheaper repair/paint.

If you’re just starting and every dollar counts, a full $300 respray is guaranteed profitable when car is >22% painted. Fixing paint/damage, each 10% is worth ~$133-$152 without bargain skill. You will most likely lose money with repairs early on, but painting, especially parts instead of full, is usually slightly profitable.

Examples:

—Extremely low value car, no repair/paint price reduction skills, 70-130% price:
2010 Fiyat Panta
50% damage, 23% painted 50% dirty: $1,232 – $2,288
0% damage ($1000 cost), 23% painted: $2,101 – $3,214
0% damage ($1000 cost), 0% painted ($160 cost): $2,380 – $3,640
0% dirty: still $2,380 – $3,640
+$1600 tuning: $3,136 – $5,824

Investment vs price increase extremely low value car:
$1000 damage repair: $869 – $926 price increase
$160 parts-only respray: $279 – $426 price increase
$1600 tuning: $756 – $2,184 price increase (2184 = 1600×1.05×1.3)
Net: -$856 – $776

—Low value car, no repair/paint price reduction skills, 70-130% price:
2004 Chevlet Kobalt:
73% damage, 31% painted: $7,293 – $13,543
0% damage ($1460 cost), 31% painted: $8,021 – $14,896
0% damage ($1460 cost), 0% painted ($248 cost): $8,330 – $15,470
+$1600 tuning: $9,506 – $17,654

Investment vs price increase low value car:
$1460 damage repair: $728 – $1,353 price increase
$248 parts-only respray: $309 – $574 price increase
$1600 tuning: $1,176 – $2,184 price increase (2184 = 1600×1.05×1.3)
Net: -$1,095 – $803

—Mid value car, no repair/paint price reduction skills, 70-130% price:
2022 NG5
24% damage, 20% painted: $48,561 – $90,185
0% damage ($480 cost), 20% painted: $48,801 – $90,630
0% damage ($480 cost), 0% painted ($160 cost): $49,000 – $91,000
+$1550 tuning: $50,139 – $93,116

Investment vs price increase mid value car:
$480 damage repair: $240 – $445 price increase
$160 parts-only respray: $199 – $370 price increase
$1600 tuning: $1,139 – $2,116 price increase (2116 = 1550×1.05×1.3)
Net: -$662 – $691

All this work and earning at most $1k extra, $2k with half-price repair/paint? Sell dirty, junky cars!

TL;DR Version

There are good customers (8-12/day) and lowballers (3-5/day).

If a customer accepts your price without bargaining, that means they were willing to pay more.

If a lowballer is offering less than half of your listing price, you’re way overpricing your car.

Get bargain 2 and best price

Value strategy: List all cars for the lowest orange price and bargain all customers to $1 below asking price. 62.2% of good customers will accept.

Efficiency strategy: List all cars for the highest average price and bargain all customers to $1 below asking price. 100% of good customers will accept. Only lowballers will refuse.

Burning money leaderboard climbing strategy: List all cars for 10% below lowest price shown and nobody will haggle with you, even lowballers.

Detailed Explanation

The Best Price skill gives you this gauge when you go to list a car for sale, which is vague, but actually allows you to determine the exact value of your car when you know what it means. Here’s what it actually means:

The price gauge shows the value of the car from 70% to 130%
70%-85% Lower Price
85%-93% Below Average
93%-107% Average
107%-115% Above Average
115%-130% High Price

There are two types of customers that enter your lot, good customers and lowballers.
Good customers offer you 93%-107% of the car’s value (the average range)
Lowballers offer you 65.1-88.35% (70-95% of 93%)

As of v0.15, you will always get 8-12 good customers and 3-5 lowballers per day.

For selling, bargain skill lets you ask for the following
Amateur (1): 7% more
Apprentice (2): 12% more
Master (3): 17% more

This is slightly lower than the max when buying, which is 5%/10%/20%. Bargaining is subject to rounding, so always add or remove a little bit when buying or selling.

You cannot negotiate higher than your original asking price, so if you want maximum value then it’s in your best interest to price your car high. Pretend you’re Dr. Evil and ask for 1,000,000 for all cars if you want. Now that lowballer percent isn’t tied to your greediness, you don’t have to ask for reasonable prices to get fair offers. But non-lowball customers will always have initial offer in average price range, so if you want to earn more than 108.81% price you will have to turn down some good customers.

The max possible price you can sell a car for is the best possible offer (107%) * the best possible bargain (17%) to give you a sale price of 125.19%, or a range of 108.81-125.19% with good customers.

Using this knowledge, we can implement a couple of easy selling strategies with max bargain skill.

List all cars for the lowest orange price (115%) and bargain all customers to $1 below our asking price. 62.2% of good customers will accept.

List all cars for the highest average price (107%) and bargain all customers to $1 below our asking price. 100% of good customers will accept. Only lowballers will refuse.

Don’t care about money because you’re rich, just want to sell cars for leaderboard rank? List all cars for the lowest price (70%) and even the stingiest of lowballers will accept $1 below asking price with lvl 1 bargain. List for 10% less than the lowest price shown and lowballers won’t even haggle with you. 100% of customers, good and bad, will outright buy the car.

If you want maximum value and are willing to pull out a calculator and turn down good customers regularly, list just below 120% and offer $1 less.
~31.7% of good customers will pay up to 120%

0.1.5 (5/21)
Guide updated to detail how damaged/painted affects sale price specifically rather than just saying no. But also, just say no.
Game’s lowballer algorithm changed. Listing price no longer determines number/frequency of ‘good’ customers.
Poker capped at $20k/hand. RIP cheaters.0.1.42 – 0.1.44 (5/20)
Initial guide written for game’s mechanics in current state.
Game’s sell bargain mechanic updated to 7%/12%/17% scale.
Game’s Best Price skill fixed.

Pre EA 0.7 (5/18)
Launch day version. Game has very low max upsell with bargain skill (3% more max for all bargain levels)

Almost all the modifiers to value only affect the prices at which vehicles are sold to you, not when you sell to a customer. When a car is created, it is given a base value. Damage, dirt, mileage, features are added onto the car randomly at the time it is sold and that affects the seller’s asking price, which is capped at the base value but can be much lower if the car is in rough shape.

Once the car is in your hands, however, the car is valued at the base value, which can never be lower than what you paid for it. Thus, buying beat up, badly painted cars with high mileage will earn you a huge profit while pristine cars with low mileage and fancy features only a modest profit.

Cleaning and refueling a car does nothing for value. Adding a picture or title to your posting does nothing as well. Repairing, repainting, and tuning a car adds very little value. Apart from getting achievements, if your goal is to profit quickly or climb the leaderboards then you should just sell cars as-is (or be a cheater and save scum poker, whatever floats your boat).

An example car’s sell value:
Fiyay 131
71.5k km mileage

10% dmg 35% painted: 195.5-363.2k
0% dmg ($150 repair) 0% painted ($175 respray): 195.9-364k
Tuning Racing,ABS,Turbo,NOS ($1240): 196.9-365.7k

So all that work fixing up the car, repainting it, and adding cool features only netted us an extra 2.5k max sale price at the cost of 1.5k, or an extra 1k profit at best. In that same time we could have bought 2-3 more cars and thrown them in our lot.

And to salt the wound, driving the fixed/tuned car into the car lot walls until engine breaks
70% damage: 196.2k – 364.3k — a loss of only 700-1400 for totally trashing a perfect car.

Now onto the fun part, selling people our dirty clunkers for high prices!

TL;DR Version

If a customer accepts your price without bargaining, that means they were willing to pay more.

If a lowballer is offering less than half of your listing price, you’re way overpricing your car.

Get bargain 2 and best price

Value strategy: List all cars for the lowest orange price and bargain all customers to $1 below asking price. We will get 5-6 good customers per day, and 62.2% of good customers will accept.

Efficiency strategy: List all cars for the highest average price and bargain all customers to $1 below our asking price. We will get the max, 6-7 good customers per day, and 100% of them will accept. Only lowballers will refuse.

Burning money leaderboard climbing strategy: List all cars for 10% below lowest price shown and nobody will haggle with you, even lowballers.

Detailed Explanation

The Best Price skill gives you this gauge when you go to list a car for sale, which is vague, but actually allows you to determine the exact value of your car when you know what it means. Here’s what it actually means:

The price gauge shows the value of the car from 70% to 130%
70%-85% Lower Price
85%-93% Below Average
93%-107% Average
107%-115% Above Average
115%-130% High Price

There are two types of customers that enter your lot, good customers and lowballers.
Good customers offer you 93%-107% of the car’s value (the average range)
Lowballers offer you 65.1-88.35% (70-95% of 93%)

You will always get 3-5 lowballers per day. The amount of good customers you get depends on your asking price.
<110%: 6-7
<120%: 5-6
<130%: 2-3
<140%: 1
>=140%: 0

For selling, bargain skill lets you ask for the following
Amateur (1): 7% more
Apprentice (2): 12% more
Master (3): 17% more

This is slightly lower than when buying, which is 5%/10%/20%. Bargaining is subject to rounding, so always add or remove a little bit when buying or selling.

You cannot negotiate higher than your original asking price, so if you want maximum value then it’s in your best interest to slightly overprice your cars — to the extent that you can tolerate the loss in foot traffic.

The max possible price you can sell a car for is the best possible offer (107%) * the best possible bargain (17%) to give you a sale price of 125.19%, or a range of 108.81-125.19% with good customers.

Using this knowledge, we can implement a couple of easy selling strategies with max bargain skill.

List all cars for the lowest orange price (115%) and bargain all customers to $1 below our asking price. We will get 5-6 good customers per day, and 62.2% of good customers will accept.

List all cars for the highest average price (107%) and bargain all customers to $1 below our asking price. We will get the max, 6-7 good customers per day, and 100% of them will accept. Only lowballers will refuse.

Don’t care about money because you’re rich, just want to sell cars for leaderboard rank? List all cars for the lowest price (70%) and even the stingiest of lowballers will accept $1 below asking price with bargain. List for 10% less than the lowest price shown and lowballers won’t even haggle with you. 100% of customers, good and bad, will outright buy the car.

If you want maximum value and are willing to pull out a calculator and turn down good customers regularly, list just below 120% and you still get 5-6 good customers per day.
~31.7% of good customers will pay up to 120%