There are a variety of cars sold cheap at Palm Bay FL auto auctions. As with any major purchase, the key is not only to save money, but also get a quality, reliable product. Just because it is cheap, doesn’t mean that it is a good investment. Fortunately, there are a number of things that you can do in order to make sure that the next cheap car you buy at auction is still a quality one. Here is a quick look at some of the different types of auctions and how you can asses the quality of the vehicles.
The most common type of auction in Palm Bay, FL is repossession auctions or general public auctions. These auctions can have cars available from all over. While a majority of them tend to be from lending institutions, such as banks and credit unions, who have had to repossess the vehicle from the previous owner due to defaulted loan payments, there will also likely be some used cars from dealerships as well. In order to target the cars sold cheap at Palm Bay FL auto auctions and still give yourself a high likelihood of finding a great deal, it is important to try and purchase cars entered by lending institutions. In general, dealerships will only enter a car into public auctions after they have already tried to sell it as wholesale (dealers-only) auctions. This means that there is likely something wrong with the car that other dealers noticed, which is why it wasn’t purchased.
Another popular type of auction is government auctions. The city of Palm Bay holds one public auto auction per year. This auction includes fleet vehicles and cars that were impounded and never picked back up by their former owner. In these types of auctions, you want to try and target former fleet vehicles used by the government. The reason for this is two-fold. First, government fleet vehicles follow a fairly rigid maintenance schedule, which means that you know it was well taken care of. On the other hand, it is more difficult to find out the maintenance history of a car that was left in impound.
The second reason to target government fleet vehicles is that you will get the keys with them. If a car is impounded, then the government has no way to get the keys for the vehicle. As a result, you not only have to get a new key for it, but you also have to tow the car home after the auction, instead of driving it away.
While there are a lot of cars sold cheap at Palm Bay FL auto auctions, only a portion of them are going to be reliable and worth the investment. Targeting repossessed vehicles and former fleet vehicles will normally be your best option.
