Won my first car on an online auction (harbertsautosales) - how it went

good writeup. the buyer premium trips up every single first timer so let me break the math down so nobody gets surprised at checkout. people see hammer price and think that is the cost. it is not, and that is not harbert's being sneaky, every auction on earth works this way, the fees are posted right on the lot page before you bid.

here is roughly what your 14,900 hammer actually costs you all in. numbers will vary a little by state and distance but this is the shape of it.

the trick to bidding sane is to figure out your max ALL IN number first, then back out the fees and shipping to get your max HAMMER number. so if your true ceiling is 18k all in for that accord, your max hammer is around 15,200, not 18k. bid the hammer number, never the dream number. a clean 2018 accord sport with 61k retails 19 to 21 around here so even all in you did real good.

the shipping part is what scared me too on my first one. open carrier from texas to me in colorado was 650 and took 6 days, which honestly felt fast. i used a broker harbert's recommended but you are free to arrange your own hauler, they will release the car to whoever shows up with the right paperwork.

couple things i learned that help a first timer. open carrier is fine for a normal used car, you do not need enclosed unless it is something special or really low. get the bill of lading and walk around the car WITH the driver at delivery, take photos of every panel before you sign, that is your protection if something happened in transit. mine showed up with a thin layer of road dust and that was it.

also ask for the door to door vs terminal to terminal price. terminal is cheaper but you have to go pick it up at a yard somewhere, door to door they bring it to your house. for 60 or 80 bucks difference i always do door to door.

before anyone bids please do your homework. pull the vin report, look at every photo zoomed in, read the condition notes twice. on the harbert's listings the condition write up actually flags the stuff most sellers hide, mine noted a curbed rear wheel and a small door ding before i even asked. that tells me they are not trying to paper over things.

my checklist for a public auction car i cannot touch:

1) decode the vin yourself and confirm the trim and options match the photos. 2) run an accident/title history, clean title on the listing should also show clean on your own report. 3) zoom every photo, look for paint mismatch panel to panel, overspray on trim, mismatched tire brands which can mean cheap replacements. 4) read the announced condition and odometer statement, an exempt or not actual mileage flag changes everything. 5) call and ask the specific question that would make you walk away. if they answer straight, good sign.

ty did this right by asking up front. the auctions that burn people are the ones where the buyer skipped the boring 20 minutes of reading because they got excited. excitement is the enemy of a good buy.

my honest almost got burned story, and it was 100% my own fault not the auction. i set my max way too high on my first auction because i fell in love with a specific truck, a 2017 F150 Lariat. i told myself i had to have THAT one. by the last ten minutes me and one other bidder were trading 250 dollar bumps and i had already blown past my all in number by about 1900 bucks and did not even notice because i was just watching the other guy.

what saved me was the soft close actually. the timer kept extending and during one of those extensions i got up to refill my coffee, looked at the total with buyer premium added, and went oh no what am i doing. i stopped. the other guy got it. i was bummed for a day.

two weeks later a basically identical Lariat showed up on harbert's, i bid my disciplined number, and i won it for 1600 less than where i would have ended up on the first one. the lesson is the inventory keeps coming. there is never just one truck. since being a control freak about my number i have not regretted a single buy. so it worked out, but only because the soft close gave me a second to come to my senses.

licensed dealer here, i buy at the closed dealer auctions every week and i source retail customers on the side. i will say the public online auctions like harbert's are more honest than people assume. at the dealer only sales the cars run through a lane in 90 seconds and you barely get to look. a public online auction actually gives a regular buyer MORE time and more photos than i get in the lane.

for a first timer buying one car for yourself, you are not at a disadvantage to guys like me the way you would be on a dealer floor. the buyer premium you pay is roughly the margin a flipper like dana or me would tack on anyway, so buying direct off the auction you are basically cutting out the middleman and paying the fee instead. that math favors you.

one tip from the trade. the best deals are the unsexy cars. everybody piles onto the lifted trucks and the sport trims and bids them to retail. the boring silver commuter sedan with a clean carfax goes cheap because nobody is emotional about it. ty buying an accord sport, decent, but a base LX would have gone even cheaper. buy the car nobody is fighting over.

the soft close is your best friend, do not panic bid. i lost two cars early on by getting emotional and going 1500 over what i planned, and the worst part is one of them i would not even have bought at that price if you had offered it to me in a parking lot. something about a ticking clock and a green BID button does things to your brain.

what works for me now is i write my max hammer number on an actual sticky note and put it on my monitor before the auction. when the war starts i look at the note, not the screen. if the bid passes the note, i close the tab. sounds silly but it stopped me from doing dumb stuff.

and yeah to what min said, on harbert's especially there is always another one coming. i watch their new listings and a comparable car shows up every couple weeks. losing one is not losing, it is just practice for the next one.

i flip 3 or 4 a year as a side thing and source a lot of them off harbertsautosales. the math only works if you respect the all in number, same as everyone has been saying. i keep a spreadsheet, every car gets a buy ceiling that already includes premium, doc, shipping to my driveway, plus my recon budget and the margin i want. if the bid passes the ceiling i am out, no feelings.

for a first timer buying to keep instead of flip, you have it easier than me, you do not need to leave margin in it, you just need to come in under retail and you almost always will. ty came in around 3 grand under retail on the accord which as a one car keeper is a great outcome.

only thing id add for new folks, budget a few hundred for recon you cannot see in photos. fresh oil, maybe a brake job coming due, a cabin filter that smells like a gym bag, a wiper or two. it is never zero. on a clean lease return like ty's it will be small but plan for it so it does not feel like a surprise.

glad it worked out. now that you have done one the second one is way less stressful, you already know the whole flow, the verification, the wire, the hauler. my first took me a week of nerves and my third i did from my phone on a lunch break without thinking twice.

and a clean accord for 17 and change shipped to your door is a buy you will not regret. those things run forever. come back and let us know if you ever do a second.