Sell My Car STL vs. Facebook Marketplace.
Full honesty up front: a patient private seller with a clean car can out-earn every professional buyer, including us. The rest of this page is about what "patient" actually costs.
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The honest rundown
How selling on Marketplace actually works
You photograph the car, write a listing, name a price, and then field messages. Some are serious. Many are "is this still available," a lowball, or a request to meet somewhere you should not go. You handle the test drives, the negotiation, the payment verification and all of the paperwork yourself — including the title assignment and, in Missouri, the Notice of Sale within 30 days. If you are titled in Illinois, your buyer also owes Private Party Vehicle Use Tax on Form RUT-50, which many of them will try to negotiate out of your price.
For the right car and the right person, it genuinely produces the highest number in this comparison. The honest accounting is that sellers routinely spend ten to twenty hours across several weeks, and that the two local complications — a car that cannot pass Gateway emissions, or a title from the other side of the river — both land hardest in a private sale.
Side by side
The comparison, in plain rows
Fair is fair
Where Marketplace honestly wins
A paid-off, desirable, mechanically sound car owned by someone with a second vehicle, a safe place to meet, and real patience will net more privately than any professional buyer can pay. That is arithmetic, not opinion: we have to leave room for reconditioning and margin, and a private buyer does not.
If that describes you, go do it — and if our paperwork guides help you get it right, use them free of charge. <a href="/guides/how-to-sell-a-car-in-st-louis">The St. Louis checklist</a> covers the plate rule and the 30-day notice that catch most first-time private sellers here.
Our side of the ledger
Where we win
- Profit sharing is the retail-side number without becoming a part-time car dealer — a reserve check now, a second check when it sells.
- Certainty: a firm offer the day you walk in, rather than a listing that might convert.
- The two local hard cases, a failed Gateway emissions test and an Illinois title, are routine for us and a wall in a private sale.
- Nobody comes to your house, and nobody hands you a counterfeit cashier's check.
The honest verdict
Marketplace is the top of the payout range and the bottom of the effort-to-reward curve. Profit sharing exists precisely for that trade: the retail-side number without the strangers, the weekends, or the paperwork. If you would rather have your Saturdays, we built your option.
Get both of our numbersFAQ
Facebook Marketplace vs. us: quick answers
Possibly, and we will not pretend otherwise. A clean, paid-off, in-demand car sold privately by a patient seller usually nets the most. The question is what ten to twenty hours of your time and the risk are worth to you.
Keep digging
More honest homework
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