How to protect the value of your car

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Driving your BMW off the showroom forecourt is just about the worst thing you can possibly do to its value. In terms of percentages, you can expect your car to depreciate at a rate of about 60% over three years, before starting to level off slightly at around 70% over a five year period. This means that over the initial three year period, your BMW depreciates at 20% per year, or 1% every 18 days. As an example, before you’ve even quite had your new car for three months, 5% of its value has been flushed down the drain. A scary thought.

There are several major factors that can, of course, sink your resale value of your car even faster than the expected average numbers stated above. For example, if there is a recall on the car because it has been found to have a nasty habit of overheating and catching fire, you can expect the number of people willing to part with their cash to take it off your hands to be very low, meaning you will need to lower the asking price if you want to make a sale. Also, if the car is in an accident, depreciation can be affected. More importantly however you should call a New Orleans car accident lawyer following any kind of road accident.

Now, let’s look at some of the ways that you can protect the resale value of your BMW.

Immaculate condition

People are weird. They will walk past a car and see a dent in the door or bumper and think “I’m glad that’s not my car”, but then they will expect the same damage to their own vehicle not to affect the resale value. If you want to ensure that the resale value of your BMW is as close to the calculated value of depreciation, you must ensure that every aspect of the vehicle is in as immaculate a condition as possible. This means consciously parking your car away from other cars to avoid ‘door dings’. You should also try to park out of the sun to avoid any dimming or uneven aging of the paint work.

Don’t drive it

Who buys a car to leave it parked up in a temperature controlled room, never to be driven. Nobody. But that’s the ideal way to ensure that the resale value of your BMW is kept as high as possible. So, what can we do? The answer is not to drive the car too often. Keep the mileage down and the resale value will benefit. This is why people with high value cars tend to own a separate car for daily use. Which means the advice here is: buy two cars.