How to start a used car dealership

Starting a car dealership can be a daunting prospect, but by taking the right steps and being prepared, you can make it a much less stressful and more enjoyable.

First, consider whether you will want to start with a business premises that customers can visit to view your cars, whether you want to start from home, or whether you want to do a combination of selling from home whilst storing your vehicles off-site at a unit, or compound or similar.

Next, think about how and where you will source your stock. There are many different ways of doing this:

• Buying from private sellers
• Buying from auctions
• Taking in part exchange

In our opinion, a great place to start is by buying stock from private sellers, which gives you a wide market and can help ease you into the process of buying cars to sell, where you will pick up techniques on what to look out for and how to negotiate with sellers.

Once you've sold a few cars, you'll be able to take in part exchanges if you wish to, which is a great opportunity to get great vehicles in to sell without having to pay auction fees. This can also reduce the risk of buying misdescribed cars as you will usually have seen them before you confirm the sale.

Of course, these are just simple ideas and really, we just scratched the surface.

There will be other things to research, like registering as a limited company, or operating as a sole trader, for example.

If you want to give it a try, it's worth getting yourself a fantastic car dealership website with a 30 day free trial and no contract. Talk to us here and we'll be more than happy to help!