Modify Your Vehicle, Raise Its Value

Three years ago, I bought a brand new Honda Civic. It was black, had tinted windows, and alloy wheels. Everyone had told me that Honda's really hold their value well. The car cost me $22,000. Only three years later, I decided that I wanted to sell my car. I went to Kelley Blue Book to see how much my car was worth. To my surprise, the vehicles value dropped in half. After only three years of use I had lost nearly $11,000.

I am not the type of person that will roll over and let these kind of things happen to me. I had to do something about it. I started to do some research and found out that there are several things that you can do to your car to really increase their value. Many of these things are relatively inexpensive and could result in you selling your car for thousands more than you originally thought could be possible.

One thing that I found is that the cars with nicer stereo systems often sold for more money. To get a nice stereo system, you don't need to invest a whole lot of money, especially is you are willing and capable of installing the system yourself. Going right along with stereo systems, DVD players also seemed to improve the value of the car by quite a bit. Any auto improvement store can do this in an afternoon. I had this done to my vehicle and it only cost about $500.

Surprisingly enough, another modification to your car that you may not have thought about is adding a train horn. These horns are very loud. They produce sounds with dB levels up to 152 and they only cost a few hundred dollars. Many people may not be interested in buying a car with this sort of modification, but you may be surprised at the response you get when you put your car up for sale and you mention that a train horn has been installed.

Before anyone sells their car, there are always a few things that can be done to improve its value. Don't settle for what the blue book value says. You can always get more out of your vehicle if you do the right modifications and if you are patient.