Sometimes I wish I were just a normal car owner who could trade in their car to a dealership and get something new, repeating that cycle every few years until I die. This way, I’d never have to deal with the agonies of selling a car privately again. In my experience, selling a car is the least exciting, least enjoyable part of the ownership experience.
I’ve owned dozens of different cars, from worthless trashboxes that barely ran to fairly clean, desirable performance machines. But I’ve never once had an easy, pleasant time selling a car. Instead, I’ve had to deal with disorganized, flaky, and often rude buyers who end up ghosting me after a few Facebook Marketplace messages. It’s been much of the same so far while trying to sell my Miata.
Things are made far less convenient by my location. I live in New York City, which means organizing viewings, snagging pictures for prospective buyers, and test drives are far more difficult than they’d be anywhere else in the country. Here’s why.
I Don’t Live Near My Car
Here’s the thing about New York: Driveways and in-building parking garages are reserved for the wealthy. Homes with included parking are exceedingly rare, and if your apartment building happens to have a parking garage under it, a spot costs several hundred dollars per month. My apartment building doesn’t have any parking, which means if I want to keep a car nearby, I have to park it on the street.
For many years, that’s exactly what I did. While there was some level of convenience, the cons of having a car living out in the cold outweighed the pros. Not only did I constantly have to worry about moving my car to avoid street parking tickets, but I also regularly dealt with damage caused by other motorists. I didn’t want to subject my Miata to that, so I managed to find an off-street parking spot that I paid to have access to.
Like I said, those spots are expensive. But they get cheaper the farther away from the main island of Manhattan you get. My spot is in Brooklyn, two subway stops away from my home. I’d get something closer, but it was the only one I could afford.
See where the problem is, right? If someone wants to come take a look at the car, I can’t just give them my address and have them show up at my house. Instead, I have to call ahead to the garage to have them get it out of storage (this is a valet-only lot, which means I don’t park it), and pay $2.90 in subway fare to present the Miata to anyone interested.
I have the same issue if someone messages me asking for a specific type of picture of my Miata. Because I’m not near the car, I can’t just snag a quick photo of the brake pads or film a video of a cold start. That would involve a 45-minute round trip and cost me $5.80. It’s impeccably annoying.
Doing Test Drives Is A Nightmare
Downtown Brooklyn, where my Miata is parked, isn’t exactly the most hospitable place for cars. There’s lots of traffic, plenty of bikers, numerous pedestrians, and the speed limit is 25 miles per hour. Not to mention the quality of the pavement is among the worst in the state.
Those factors, all combined, make the area a pretty terrible place to drive, much less to test a vehicle to ensure it’s working properly. If I were test-driving a car, this is the last place I’d want to do it. And prospective buyers likely feel the same way. So far, I’ve had three curious customers show up to check out my car. But none of them have been able to get out of third gear, much less experience the car’s handling or braking attributes.
I can understand why none of them made me a real offer. Even if the car drives fine at 30 mph, how can they tell if everything works without getting up to highway speeds? I made the mistake of buying a car without checking how it ran at high speeds once, and only discovered the problem (a heavily worn-out wheel bearing) once I got on the highway to drive home. Never again.
Here’s My Plan
As (bad) luck would have it, I’m losing my parking spot at the end of November. That means in the next month or so, I’ll have to find a new home for the Miata if it doesn’t sell. Instead of continuing to let strangers on the internet drive the car a few blocks only for them to ghost me the next day, I’ve come up with a different plan.
In fact, I’ve already set this plan into motion. After I bashed my eye socket on the Miata’s tow hook this past weekend, I left the car at my parents’ house in upstate New York, electing to take my Range Rover home instead. That might seem counterintuitive, seeing as how the car is now even further away from me than it was before. Just hear me out.
With my dad at his house, he can just sell the car for me. All I have to do is arrange the meetup, and he’ll be the person to present the car and give out test drives (what a great guy, right?). This also solves the cityscape test drive problem, as my parents’ house is out in the suburbs, where there’s plenty of room for people to stretch the Miata’s legs.
I’ve done this type of move in the past, but usually for car parts, not whole cars. So I’m a bit uneasy about it. But I also trust my dad not to get scammed by people, so I’m confident things will go just fine. Whether I’ll be able to make any money on the Miata upon its sale, well, that’s an entirely different story. So stay tuned.
Top graphic images: Brian Silvestro
I had a co-worker who had a similar problem living in Chicago’s Near North Side.
He bought a 5-speed Jeep Wrangler, then realized how much of a PITA it was trying to park it. When he tried to sell it, most of the people who showed up to look at it were young girls who couldn’t drive a stick-shift and did not know that 5-speed meant it had a clutch. He ended up moving it to a friend’s house out in the suburbs and selling it for a loss.
Which is why I live in an area with a population density of only 26.3 people per square mile.
My next one is going to be No. 39…
Ofc, not all at the same time. At most, I had 7 simultaneously, but all in my building’s parking, at least.
Now that I’m well up into the ‘over ten’ range of how many cars I’ve owned (and contemplating yet another one, even though I’ve currently got three) I agree that selling a car is the worst part of ownership barring the car being a lemon of some sort. I once donated a car to a charity (the Red Cross, just after 9/11) and of course that was painless, but unless you need the write-off taxwise, you’re missing out on whatever the car is worth (a few grand in the case of my problematic but nice late 80s Audi 90).
As a car guy and former New Yorker, you have my sympathy Brian. And I still can’t get over how nice your parent’s garage looks. 🙂
PS: if that Audi didn’t have an undiagnosed habit of the engine turning off without warning while driving and not turning back on for minutes to days later, I like to think I might still have it. It was a decade+ older than my ’00 VW, and TBH, it did feel better made.
don’t feel bad at all. My dad lives on the main drag of my little hometown. The whole town drives past his house on any given day. Anything we’ve ever parked at the end of his driveway sells in 3 days or less.
You never want to have the potential buyer meet at your home or property! Always meet at a neutral spot. Meeting near the AAA is convenient for doing the transfer paperwork. Auto Club of Southern California can handle most sales transactions and you can avoid the DMV.
Yeah not a good idea to meet at your house. Personally the last time I sold a car I met one of them in the parking lot of a little strip mall that conviently has a police substation in it. For what every reason they never seem to hang out inside of the building, they are almost always in their vehicles which are backed in to give a quick exit but also so they can see the entire parking lot. I figure an occupied and running police car across the isle should scare away the worst of the worst while the person I brought along can lay on the horn if anything goes south.
Meant to add that some of the larger police stations also have a area set aside for such transactions.
This is generally true… but is suburban thinking. In cities you can meet someone “at” your house and they will have no clue which one it is. Still a prudent rec tho.
Yeah, back in the day I’d do craigslist buy/sell at the police station parking lot.
“You never want to have the potential buyer meet at your home or property! “
Interestingly I’ve always had the buyer meet me at my home… and I haven’t been murdered yet!
Same here. If you want to buy something from me you are coming to my house. I gave up on meeting flakes in random places years ago because half of them ghost.
I did make an exception last week when I sold my campervan. I drove it to work and met the buyer there. Figured if they didn’t show it was just a regular commute.
Why? What will happen if the buyer comes to my house and we do the deal in my driveway?
well, how much for the Miata? I mean, here in NYC…
Good luck with this new plan Brian.
Wish I was closer to you but that’s life sometimes.
Miatias are few and far between down here in my neck of the woods.
I hope you buy something extra nice for your dad if he completes the sale. In my case The Old Man would complain incessantly about the inconvenience and then want like a third of the sales money just for the trouble of staying at the house where he was going to be anyway. Meanwhile, my mom would be utterly spastic as to what kind of people were going to be showing up, thus making The Old Man’s claim on the funds kinda valid.
The car would get sold for half of my asking price on the second day it was listed because “that’s all the damn thing was worth”.
Finally, the whole ordeal would be thrown at me like a right Bower unexpectedly tossed mid Pepper-match during a family gathering three years later. “Well I don’t care if your busy at the office, we need help with the yard that day and besides, we were the ones who sold that goofy little car of yours.”
Nope.
When I was just 16 my old man illegally “sold” my excellent 1969 Dodge Super Bee by forging my name on a bill of sale.
I was 1,500 miles away in Colorado at the time working a summer job to earn the money needed to rebuild the worn out engine at 60,000 miles.
(Stuff lasts a lot longer these days)
Sold for $400 bucks. Really. Then he tried to weasel me out of the 400 bucks.
51 years later he has not been forgiven.
Oh shiiiiiiit! That completely eclipses any of the reasons I learned not to engage with my folks on matters of money. And on a ’69 Super Bee none the less.
That’s gotta…
Sting.
[runs for the door]
Thanks. By the way he never told me he sold it. It was to be shipped out to me. Never arrived, not a word of explanation offered.
I had a room full of new internal engine parts waiting for it so the engine could be rebuilt.
So then I had the enviable job of trying to return a few hundred bucks of special ordered parts and eating the 10-25% “return-restocking” costs.
My old man and I shared the same first name, so in his bent mind there was no crime committed. And he was a cop, yes a cop.
We can’t choose who are our parents are and it sucks sometimes.
Shit happens…
BTW my old man ended up getting married 5 times after my Mom finally bailed on his crap behavior.
I still feel bad for his ex wives, they have no idea what they were about to step into…
Oof, those details make it even worse. I remember being told not to buy any more cars in general, to get rid of cars, and to not “…dare bring that thing home” in reference to a ’69 Cadillac I had already purchased when I was 17. Never had the one-two punch of a forged name and rug pull though. Especially given the fact that you were working in order to fix the car up. Cold, really really cold.
Every manage to find a replacement Super Bee?
The Super Bee was also my first car…my granny had started me a bank account for my first car when I was born.
So it was a particularly weird and shitty situation to say the least.
Damn… and the hits keep coming. Good point about the parents – I try to find the high points and concentrate on those. Sounds like it could be easier said than done in this case.
From the stories I’ve heard, I could perhaps envision my grandpa pulling a stunt like this, but luckily some of that craziness had been diluted by the time The Old Man produced me.
Granny sounds awesome – too bad that didn’t carry through.
There’s always someone parking old Bentleys with for sale signs on them in Park Slope. Also Italian micro cars from the 50s, not the same guy though. 7th Ave and and third street seems to be a popular spot
Or you could offer it on BaT and tell us about an actual seller experience?
Just list it on eBay. In a week, it’ll be gone. If it’s really nice, go for Cars and Bids or BaT. There’s also the Carvana option, you could at least ask.
I am curious how much for miata!
As a capital region guy, i also anger at your use of ‘upstate’
I truly don’t understand why anyone–especially a gear-head–would want to live in NYC.
And you’re okay sending FB randos – who, by your own description, are fairly unpleasant – to your parents’ house?
You know your family, but I would not be comfortable doing that [to my parents].
you live in the NYC. you dont need a car. you can save like $1500 per month compared to car-shackled folks in this country. they talk about their rent/mortgage being $1500 for a 2BR but they dont factor in that they need at least two cars in the fleet so really theyre paying close to $3500-4500 which is the cost of a 2BR in nyc.
you need some groceries? walk down the block. you want to go to the best museums, concert venues, restaurants, bars, fashion, and the most diverse ethic communities in the USA? take the subway for $3 fricking dollars.
you really want to keep the car? just park it at your parents but if that’s not an option get a spot in NJ for $150 a month when you drive it like twice a month. or just street park? in BK it wasnt that bad for me.
but if that’s all too much for ya just move dude. NYC isnt for everyone but the potential is vast. college grad from $50K to now, after 12 years, making around ~$400K with just a bachelors. this city is crazy/awesome/awful/amazing/disgusting/worth-it.
“you need some groceries? walk down the block. you want to go to the best museums, concert venues, restaurants, bars, fashion, and the most diverse ethic communities in the USA? take the subway for $3 fricking dollars.”
No thanks. I prefer the peace, quiet and copious elbow room of suburbia. I can grow some of my own food in my backyard and cook it up myself in my roach free kitchen and not get harassed to leave a 20%+ tip on top of the labor portion of my bill. Besides a lot of sit down restaurant food these days is just frozen Sysco/Restaurant Depo stuff at a huge markup. I can get similar at Costco and heat it up myself.
Museums are nice once in a while but once you’ve seen one Egyptian mummy or T-rex skeleton you’ve seen them all. One or two museums a year is plenty. Hardly worth the hassle of city life.
Entertainment? I have a big screen TV for that. No pushing, no crowds, no lines, no absurdly overpriced concessions, no fighting for elbow space, I control the HVAC, the volume and the instant replay, no chance of picking up a virus and I get a view no seat in the house can match.
AND there’s plenty of room for toys, including cars in a lockable attached garage just steps away from where I live. I don’t even have to put on clothes to go to my car.
You can keep your city life. I’ll take suburbia any day and twice on Sunday.
haha you either have never been to nyc or you did nyc completely the wrong way. or youre watching way too much fox news.
nicer restaurants are using farm fresh ingredients with pastured raised livestock everyday.
there are so many more museums in nyc than just the natural history museum. there’s about 170 of them and that’s not including galleries featuring up and coming new artists.
we have big screen tv’s in nyc…. i have a huge TV in my apt overlooking the city that’s quieter than most home bc my new building is sound proofed. and we have garages with personal spots or valets. but you have us beat on walking around the garage naked… you can keep that. and you can keep your car-shackled suburbia life burning fossil fuel to drive 20min just for some errands. there’s an art to the saunter; it relaxes the mind and body and keeps you from getting fat.
Never been, never wanted to. Way too far to go for a slice of (probably) over hyped pizza.
I’ve been to big cities: London, SF, LA, Paris, etc. Fine places for a short visit (even better when someone else is paying) but live downtown?
Nah.
If you like it great. Not for me though. I hear the lockdown was pretty hard on big city folks. I’m glad I wasn’t there to share in the misery. In truth I rather liked the lockdown. I did not miss people hawking their religion and whatnot knocking on my door. Nor did I miss commuter traffic.
I’ve lived in apartments, no thanks. I prefer NOT lugging my groceries through hallways, certainly not up stairs and DEFINITELY not lugging a king mattress and box spring up multiple flights of stairs.
I prefer not to be trapped in an elevator with neighbors who rant incessantly about nonsense while spreading their germs. I prefer watching Friends and thinking Phoebe’s grandma’s apartment looks kinda cramped for a single person, much less three who aren’t sleeping in the same bed. I like not having to constantly be seeing into my neighbors living spaces and them not constantly be seeing into mine.
“there are so many more museums in nyc than just the natural history museum. there’s about 170 of them and that’s not including galleries featuring up and coming new artists.”
We have museums out on the left coast as well. Lots and lots of them. Parks too. We even have concerts in them. And performing arts. Again nice places to visit, wouldn’t want to live there. Up and coming new artists do not hold any real interest for me. At most I might glance through a gallery window but I won’t bother to go inside. Besides I already have all the *up and coming* art I need from new artists within my own family. My nieces and nephews were quite proficient in kindergarten.
“you can keep your car-shackled suburbia life burning fossil fuel to drive 20min just for some errands.”
In my suburbia life driving is optional. I have plenty of shopping options within walking distance if I want to walk. Libraries and parks too. When the weather is good I walk or use my bicycle for most errands. I keep my bikes – yes plural – in my garage, no locks required and they’re out of the weather.
IF I drive I combine trips so I use as little fuel as possible and I get all my shopping done at once.
See a car is more than a way to get from point A to B. It’s also a locker. I can go to one store, buy a bunch of stuff, then go to the next store and leave all the stuff I just bought in the trunk, get even more stuff, put it in the trunk with the other stuff then go onto the next store and do it all again, and again, and again with negligible concern of a break in. I can do this in private HVAC controlled comfort, not in a muggy subway car that smells of a rancid toilet…
https://w42st.com/post/new-york-subway-soiled-mta-cleaners/
…squished in with creeps and smelly nutjobs…
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/04/30/nyc-subway-alleged-assault-corpse-video/83365945007/
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/09/23/treated-and-streeted-how-the-citys-safety-net-fails-homeless-people-in-the-subway
I can even put a cooler in my trunk and keep perishables cold. Then I can go home, pull right into my garage and have everything where it needs to be within a few minutes.
Can you do that on foot? Nope.
Does my car use gasoline? Yes. Do I drive enough to justify buying a new car? No. If I did and if that car were electric I could charge it in my garage on 220V. That’s another win for suburbia.
no the lockdown was actually great in nyc. most new yorkers enjoyed a little less crowd but that’s not what you saw on fox news.
we have elevators and dollies here for everyday things like groceries….
and moving companies for big items like mattresses….
i have 3 bicycles myself all stored in a temperature controlled bike storage room.
i also have a car believe it or not in nyc. so i too can use it was a “private hvac room” or a “cooler” but i usually prefer to walk/bike bc it’s nice. or take the subway bc i think mass transit is very important for my city and its people and our environment.
Weird how you keep bringing up Fox News. NYC was one of the first major cities to be hit so it was in ALL the news, not just Fox.
The (non FOX) reporting I recall from that time was at that the mental health of New Yorkers was hit hard:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9597573
Obviously some were hit harder than others. I imagine those on the lower end suffered more, especially those whose jobs and income evaporated. But thankfully I wasn’t there.
Again if you like living in NYC and can make it work great. Different strokes and all that. Big city life ain’t for me.
If my finances weren’t in total shambles, I’d consider buying your car. That’d be a great car to take to Puerto Rico when we (hopefully) move there in a few months. I’m a gringo and I don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb. 🙂
Just bring a huge box paper towels to pass out to randos.
And don’t mention that some consider PR to be a “shithole” country.
Back in the old days I had a couple of PR girlfriends, at different times.
Wanted to marry one of them, but stuff happens.
Good luck.
LOL. I will do exactly none of those things! Mi esposa Boricua would kill me.:)
Carvana?
Exactly why it exists.
Carvana offered me $700
Exactly why it’s always Plan B (or C)
This is why I drive my cars into the ground or trade it in. Way easier than dealing with people.
Hope you have some super awesome reasons for living in NYC. I’d have to be so ridiculously over compensated that a chauffeur would be on call.
That’s what ride shares, taxis and livery services are for.
unless I was buying a race or track car, I probably wouldn’t buy a car with a vanity plate of “Race”.
Yep, same here. Based on that plate alone, I just know this is a track car, meaning it had spent most of its life bouncing off the rev limiter and bouncing off the red-white vibrators at every apex, which is what my own track car’s life has been.
I think Carvana’s $700 was more than generous.
I can’t really imagine living (or wanting to live) in NYC, but if I did, I can’t imagine trying to own a car in NYC.
It’s not so bad, as long as you’re not in a real hot spot for clubs etc and don’t have to travel far within the city. (My wife worked outside the city and we lived very near a bridge.) Sure, at the end of the workday it can take a while to circle around trying to find metered parking, and you definitely don’t want to leave anything in the car, but that’s the case in any urban neighborhood. The real scourge is alternate-side parking where every other day they run a street sweeper up one side of the street; if you don’t drive regularly–IE actually need the car–having to relocate it a couple of times per week gets old real fast.
I had a friend who moved to NY and sold his car before hand. Seemed like the best way to live there, one of the few places in the US where you can be car-free without much sacrifice and with a huge savings in money and aggravation. Then he met his wife, who had a car, and they moved to Astoria where they had to play sliding puzzle/musical chairs to move from one side of the street to the other for street cleaning and the car would often end up blocks away. It was a friggin’ Neon and got broken into twice even with nothing in it. The dirtbags even smashed the CD-cassette adapter that was in it on the ground, presumably out of annoyance. After a few years like that, they moved some place quieter and cheaper.
Do you really need car in the city though? A city that actually has usable public transit? Do you really need to live in the city? Staten Island is an option, if NYC residency is a must. Are you a city employee or something?
Subway fares are capped at $34/week, so eventually, it stops costing you 😛
If you want city life but still want to keep a car, NJ and Philadelphia are options.
Maybe NYC should be like Japan and make you prove that you have a place to park it before you can register a car.
Of course, the tried and true method is to keep the car until it’s completely shot, then you can drive it to the junkyard with the title 😀
(or if it doesn’t run, you can call a junker tow truck)
Also, it it still available? 😉 LOL
So NYC sucks for yet another reason and you solved the problem by letting your dad do all the work? Great solution but really why own a car in a terrible cesspool?
Have you been to NYC?
In a car or otherwise?
It’s wonderful that 20 million people want to live in the NYC metro.
Think how crowded it would be everywhere else if they weren’t there.
Point taken, but remember that the car in question has a known history of violence…
https://www.theautopian.com/my-miata-gave-me-a-black-eye/