How to sell your car in Saudi Arabia faster

Selling your car in Saudi Arabia is very straight forward task. You will need to advertise the sale of your car. Interested customers will come over to see your car and someone will make the deal. You just have to make sure that your car's istimara (vehicle registration) and MVPI (motor vehicle periodic inspection) or Fahas (as known in Arabic) are valid.

How to renew your car's MVPI and Istimara

If your car has an expired Istimara or MVPI, you cannot sell it. Therefore you have to renew it and get a fresh fahas sticker on the top-right corner of the windscreen. Check our blog "How to renew Vehicle Registration or Istimara in Saudi Arabia" for useful tips on MVPI renewal as well as istimara.

Advertise your car for sale

You have to announce that your car is for sale. A good website is Expatriates.com. It is very popular among expatriates in Saudi Arabia for sale and purchase of all kinds of stuff. Here are some tips for advertising your car:-

• Mention your car's make (toyota, honda, nissan, ford etc), model (corolla, accord, accent, sunny etc) and year of manufacturing ( like 2006 etc) in Subject of your ad to make it clear and specific.
• Add some pictures of your car from different angles in your ad. Prospective customers like the ads with pictures.
• Do mention the mileage (ODO reading) clearly.
• If you are first or second owner, mention it. Such cars are preferred.
• If your car has any defect, mention is in your ad. For example, AC needs gas, shocks need replacement  and so on. You may feel that it will make customers run away, but trust me, honesty is the best policy. You do not want people call you, fix time to inspect the car and later reject it for any prominent and visible defect. Time for both parties (you and customer) will be wasted! So be honest. This way only those people will come to see the car who are already aware of this defect. Also, mind that customer may bring a mechanic to inspect the car (or take to to a workshop) who can easily discover it (he can even discover defects that do not even exist!).
• Ask for reasonable price. If you have used a car for a while and still able to sell it fir the price you bought it for (or even 30% less than that) you are in profit. Its your decision. Keep the market price in mind because customer will not pay more than that. Do mention your asking price in your ad to avoid callers just asking for the final price. Remember you will get lots and lots of calls, especially if your car is a Japanese one.
• Try your best to sell it to an individual rather than taking it to a showroom or the used cars sale agencies. They will buy it very cheap. Only if your car is not getting sold due to bad condition/accident history you can resort on selling it cheap to a showroom.

If you manage to make a deal with an interested person, next step is the transfer of ownership of the car, through a showroom.  You need to drive your car to a showroom along with the new buyer and they will do all the paperwork. Make sure you get the full amount before you sign the sale/transfer of ownership document. The showroom will take the key from you and give you a copy of the transfer document. You are done with this sale :-)