My current car has an inspection due in about two months and I already know it will not pass without more money than it is worth. I get roughly one free weekend a fortnight to go and look at things, buying used, private or small independent. I am mostly worried about running out of runway and panic buying the first thing that starts. For those of you who have done this recently, where did the time actually go?
The searching is ninety percent of the elapsed time and the buying is an afternoon. Mine took seven weeks: about five of those were browsing listings and driving to see three cars that were nothing like their description, one week was waiting for an independent inspection slot on the car I actually wanted, and the last few days were paperwork and insurance. The listings that waste your time are the ones with four photos and a phone number.
Ring around and book it provisionally before you find the car. Most places will move a slot happily and it removes a week from your critical path.
An inspection slot taking a week is exactly the sort of thing I would not have budgeted for.
I am going to disagree with the give-yourself-plenty-of-time advice. A long search made me a worse buyer, not a better one. After six weeks I had seen so many cars that I stopped seeing them clearly, started tolerating faults I would have walked away from in week one, and eventually bought something because I was tired of looking. My best purchase was made in eleven days with a tight brief and a hard budget. Two months is a fine runway, but do not treat it as a target to fill.
Both things are true and the resolution is the brief. Long searches go bad when you have no criteria. Short searches go bad when you have no options.
The step people forget entirely is insurance. Get quotes on your shortlist before you commit, because two similar cars can differ enormously and finding that out after you have agreed a price is a bad afternoon. It takes twenty minutes online and it has changed which model I bought twice.
I panic bought with three weeks left on an inspection and it cost me. Drove it twice around a housing estate, liked the way it pulled, handed over the money on a Sunday. Two months later the sills turned out to be filled and painted, which an inspection would have caught for the price of a nice dinner. I sold it a year later for a lot less than I paid and I have never again bought a car without putting it on a lift first.
Four to six weeks if you are choosy, one weekend if you are not. Paperwork is a day. The lift and the inspection are the only part worth waiting for.
@back_of_envelope · 3mo ago
I have tracked this across three purchases because I am that sort of person. Nine weeks, five weeks and three weeks respectively, and the variable that predicted it was not the market, it was how specific I was at the start.
The nine week one was me being open minded, which in practice meant looking at four different body styles and never comparing like with like. The three week one was me writing down the two models I would accept, the mileage ceiling, the maximum price and the two things that were automatic walkaways, then only looking at cars that matched. Being fussy about the specification made the search shorter, not longer, which is the opposite of what I expected.
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