Buying and Selling (2023 Guide)

With Cars.com, you can buy a car, sell your car or trade it in. The site has multiple selling options plus a huge array of shopping features. We’ll go through them all here.

How To Sell Your Car With Cars.com

You can sell your car in a couple of ways on Cars.com. You can sell your car on the Cars.com private sale marketplace or get an instant offer to sell it to a dealer. 

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Private Sale Marketplace

Selling your car privately may bring you the best value because you’re selling to the next owner rather than a middleman like a dealership. You can reach car buyers in your area and across the country on Cars.com. The website can help you create a detailed vehicle listing to attract buyers. It can also help you set the right price, taking the market value of your car and its condition into consideration.

Instant Offer

The other way to sell your car is to get an instant offer at Cars.com. You can start with your license plate number, the vehicle identification number (VIN) or your car’s make and model. You’ll provide information about the car’s condition, features and accident and owner history.

Starting with a license plate number or VIN gives Cars.com more information about your vehicle, so you can get an instant cash offer. However, if you just select your car’s make and model, you’ll get a trade-in estimate instead.

A Cars.com instant offer is good for three days, so you have to act fast. Other companies like Carvana and TrueCar provide offers that are good for seven days. If you choose to accept your offer, you’ll respond to the email you received to start the sale process. A salesperson from a local dealership will then contact you to set up an appointment and inspect your car.

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Your Cars.com offer is contingent upon an inspection at the dealership, so it might change if the online form didn’t account for everything about your car’s condition (or you didn’t answer the questions accurately).

Does Cars.com Pick Up Your Car?

Since Cars.com works with a network of dealerships, it doesn’t provide car pickup service online. However, there’s a chance a local dealer may offer home appointments or pickup services. On the car buying side, you can filter results for dealerships that offer these services. But when you sell a car, the situation depends on which dealer wants to buy your vehicle. You can call the dealer and see if it offers home pickup, but there’s no guarantee.

Cars.com Trade-In Process

After getting an instant offer, you also have the option to trade in your car to a dealership. The trade offer and cash offer values are one and the same. You’ll take your car to a dealer to have it inspected and confirm the offer amount when trading it in. 

There’s another way you can trade your car with Cars.com, too. You can start by finding the vehicle you want to buy on the website. Then, when you contact the dealer, let them know you have a car to trade. 

How To Buy a Car at Cars.com

Cars.com is one of the best places to purchase a new vehicle. It has over 2 million car listings from dealers across the country, so there’s a good chance you’ll find something in your area. To get started, you can either type a specific model into the search bar or start filtering listings by make and model. 

Once you find a car you like, you can reach out to the dealership by phone or email for more information. At that point, you’ll interact with the dealer to take the car for a test drive and finalize the transaction. Note that Cars.com doesn’t provide financing. You can get financing from the dealer or another lender.

Advanced Search Filters

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Cars.com stands out because of its advanced search filters. You don’t have to know the name of your perfect car. You can filter results to cars with sunroofs and 20-inch rims or trucks with extended cabs and power liftgates.

Beyond the basics of distance, year, make, model and mileage, you can filter the search results in the following ways:

• Price and payment: Set minimum and maximum prices or select your maximum monthly budget. Cars.com estimates payments based on average interest rates but you can put your details into a car payment calculator for more accurate results.
• Deal rating: Cars.com includes cost ratings of Great Deal, Good Deal or Fair Deal comparing the listing price to the market price for the vehicle.
• Vehicle history: You can filter for a clean title, no accident, personal use only (no fleet) and single-owner vehicles.
• Style: Dial in your ideal car by filtering body style, cab type and interior and exterior colors.
• Performance: Looking for a specific build? You can filter for transmission type, drivetrain type, number of cylinders, fuel type, EV range and EV charging time.
• Contactless services: Filter for dealers that offer home delivery or virtual appointments.
• Seller type: Select dealer, online seller or private seller. The vast majority of listings are dealership listings.
• Keyword: Add your own keyword like “sunroof” to filter for something specific.

Filtering for Car Features

There’s one thing missing from the list above: the features filter. Cars.com really shines in the vast array of features you can select when looking for a car. Say your kids have trouble with long car trips and you just need a vehicle with back seat entertainment. You can filter for that. Or, if you really love listening to your favorite albums pumped up loud, you can filter for that too. We’ll go over all the features you can filter for below.

• Convenience: Adaptive cruise control, cooled seats, heated seats, heated steering wheel, keyless start, navigation system, power liftgate or remote start
• Entertainment: Apple CarPlay^®/Android Auto^®, Bluetooth^®, HomeLink, premium sound system, rear seat entertainment or USB port
• Exterior: Alloy wheels, sunroof/moonroof, tow hitch or tow hooks
• Safety: Automatic emergency braking, backup camera, blind spot monitor, brake assist, LED headlights, lane departure warning, rear cross-traffic alert or stability control
• Seating: Leather seats, memory seats or third-row seating
• Door count: Two, three, four or five doors

Car Research

If you aren’t 100% sure which model to get, you can use Cars.com to research different vehicles and compare them. Cars.com’s editorial team reviews a wide range of cars in detail. Many models also have expert review videos for you to get a better sense of how a car looks and drives. 

The Cars.com team ranks their favorite vehicles in the 2023 Best Of awards list that includes Best of the Year, Best Pickup Truck, Best Electric Vehicle, Best SUV, Best Luxury Car and Best Family Car.

Dealer Research

Going to a new dealership sight unseen can be a bit intimidating. That’s why Cars.com collects consumer reviews of its partner dealerships and publishes an average rating for each one. Each dealer has a seller page that displays the rating along with all customer reviews.

Does Cars.com Offer a Warranty?

Since Cars.com simply advertises dealership listings, it doesn’t offer any sort of warranty. You can reach out to the selling dealership with the contact information on any listing to verify whether the car comes with a warranty.