Jump to content

Used car dealerships


Aellerix

Recommended Posts

13 hours ago, Harold said:

ur numbers are fake, theres no way you were paying the prices you claim and then selling them for almost market value.

Since we're not operating anymore, just to clear things up, I'll tell you my strategy. We had the Denov website which, among others, hosted the dealership price guide. Take a Granger, for example. I didn't care whether it was maxed out or stock, as long as it was insured. Our website showed the price to be with a low range of $46,000 so I would offer $38,000 and up that to $40,000. I always sold vehicles at either market-price or lower, but the asking price was higher, so I could negotiate it. And they would sell. Always. Except for one vehicle that wasn't bought through the dealerships, all of the profits were of $10,000 - $15,000 per car, in average. I got a Fugitive for $28,000 and sold it for $49,000 - or somewhere along those lines. It's all about sales and communication skills, not the car itself. I've had people sell a Hellfire for $140,000, I would sell it for $180,000 and then buy it back from the same person for $140,000 in 30 minutes because they didn't like it. There's a billion cases and methods and they all work. Yes, we were ripping people off and that's exactly how we made our money. That's exactly how most dealerships do it, for that matter. Some do it for the RP, others do it for the money, others do it for the RP and money, but most fit in the second category.

 

And the sad thing is that they are not fake. That's the spreadsheet that me and my partner used while we were trading vehicles, updating it after each trade. That was our business plan and it worked perfectly from day one until we closed. People are willing to take huge lowballs and overpay for vehicles. And yes, it's natural and it's on the players for allowing themselves to get ripped off, but that doesn't mean that dealerships are fine as they are and that millions of dollars in profits in a matter of days is realistic or acceptable. Trading used vehicles might be a way to get by, but definitely not a way to become the Jeff Bezos of GTA World. If we kept the dealership running for a year, with $2,500,000 in a week and a half, let's say 2 million a week, that would've been at least 104 million until next summer - and we weren't that active.

 

That being said, something should be done about it, even if it's all fair from an IC perspective. Something was done about properties - there's a 14 day cooldown period before you're able to sell it, after buying it, so why not have something like this for vehicles too? It made real estate agencies way more realistic, it would make vehicle dealerships too.

 

-> Just imagine what it would've been like for the property rules to not exist, you'd have random players flipping houses on a daily basis, making the same profit since properties sell slower but for higher profits. That was regulated, why isn't this too?

Link to comment
3 hours ago, Aellerix said:

People are willing to take huge lowballs and overpay for vehicles.

Big facts. The reason dealerships work so well is that people are impatient as all hell. As long as your car has something done to it, if you wait long enough you can get dealership price for it usually by just throwing up ads occasionally, compared to the 30-40k chunk of change(relative to the car obviously) you'd lose out on going to a dealership. However, there are sometimes good deals to be had. Just a couple weeks ago I bought a stock Gauntlet for 70k-ish and a couple days later found a dealership willing to straight trade a "maxed out" Sultan for it. Obviously I took a small monetary hit on resell value, but considering I was looking for a Sultan anyway it was fairly convenient. 

 

That being said, I limit my visits to maybe 2-3 dealerships because the people there are actually active in their roleplay, and don't just AFK waiting for someone to ask them about a car.

Link to comment
3 hours ago, Aellerix said:

Since we're not operating anymore, just to clear things up, I'll tell you my strategy. We had the Denov website which, among others, hosted the dealership price guide. Take a Granger, for example. I didn't care whether it was maxed out or stock, as long as it was insured. Our website showed the price to be with a low range of $46,000 so I would offer $38,000 and up that to $40,000. I always sold vehicles at either market-price or lower, but the asking price was higher, so I could negotiate it. And they would sell. Always. Except for one vehicle that wasn't bought through the dealerships, all of the profits were of $10,000 - $15,000 per car, in average. I got a Fugitive for $28,000 and sold it for $49,000 - or somewhere along those lines. It's all about sales and communication skills, not the car itself. I've had people sell a Hellfire for $140,000, I would sell it for $180,000 and then buy it back from the same person for $140,000 in 30 minutes because they didn't like it. There's a billion cases and methods and they all work. Yes, we were ripping people off and that's exactly how we made our money. That's exactly how most dealerships do it, for that matter. Some do it for the RP, others do it for the money, others do it for the RP and money, but most fit in the second category.

 

And the sad thing is that they are not fake. That's the spreadsheet that me and my partner used while we were trading vehicles, updating it after each trade. That was our business plan and it worked perfectly from day one until we closed. People are willing to take huge lowballs and overpay for vehicles. And yes, it's natural and it's on the players for allowing themselves to get ripped off, but that doesn't mean that dealerships are fine as they are and that millions of dollars in profits in a matter of days is realistic or acceptable. Trading used vehicles might be a way to get by, but definitely not a way to become the Jeff Bezos of GTA World. If we kept the dealership running for a year, with $2,500,000 in a week and a half, let's say 2 million a week, that would've been at least 104 million until next summer - and we weren't that active.

 

That being said, something should be done about it, even if it's all fair from an IC perspective. Something was done about properties - there's a 14 day cooldown period before you're able to sell it, after buying it, so why not have something like this for vehicles too? It made real estate agencies way more realistic, it would make vehicle dealerships too.

 

-> Just imagine what it would've been like for the property rules to not exist, you'd have random players flipping houses on a daily basis, making the same profit since properties sell slower but for higher profits. That was regulated, why isn't this too?

That's why I think there should be something to counter the big earns of a used car dealerships. I see them as the beginning bonus. Why? Well you can farm so much without buy almost anything and get a lot of money. I've saw used car dealerships opening just for money. They didn't RP almost anything and they were waiting just for they cash. There's no relationship that can rise between the buyer and the seller in this type of business. I think that first there should be a cooldown of some sort on vehicles too, I disagree with 14 days since it's a lot but I think like at least 2-3 days until you can resell the vehicle. I think also the mentality of people should change cus a 1500 miles vehicle is not high mileage, what would happen if people would start to clock a lot of miles on a vehicle a day? If he gets to 5-6000 miles? How do you call that a rip off?

Also I'm still trying to push my idea of creating branded dealerships where you can buy new vehicles from there (you could also RP adding some extras to the vehicle which would be mods on them) and also trade in your current vehicle.

 

Link to comment
On 7/13/2020 at 6:20 PM, Aellerix said:

I don't know how popular or unpopular this opinion is, but I believe that used car dealerships have to stop. It's an OOC abuse of the system that GTA World runs on.

 

How? Unlike real life, most people on the server change cars really often - as often as multiple times a day which, in turn, makes car dealerships the most profitable businesses on the server while, in real life, they would barely function - as they do. There have to be rules regarding what can and can't happen because, as it stands right now, anyone can just do an ad saying they're running a dealership and that's it.

 

I'm speaking from experience. While I ran Denov Dealership, I've seen dozens of different dealerships, some more official than others - from Autopia to Wilson's Dealership that was selling cars through SMS. That's not realistic under any circumstances. Moreover, the profit made from these businesses - which is all IC, that's the issue - is enormous. You probably don't have exact numbers but I can tell you what we made so you can get an idea. Two people running the dealership made in a day around ~300,000 in profits. On bad days, $200,000 and on good days, up to $600,000. That's just profits. I've personally managed to go from $300,000 in total assets to $2,500,000 in two weeks. Again, without breaking any rules and fully role-playing it (including an office, checkups and everything). Some make less and some make even more but I consider this to be an exploit and I want to know what other people think about it.

 

And some first-seen insider information, to clarify what I'm talking about, here are my profits during the last week of activity. There's two sheets, check them out and see what I'm talking about.

 

CLICK HERE

 

Objectively speaking, I don't find it fair for people, myself included, to be making half a million in profits in a day while others make $3,000 from bartending or as little as $2,000 from taxi-ing around all day.

As I know the owner of Denov was banned here.

 

I do not know where you've pulled those daily numbers, but I've done my average math of past 4 months running my own lot, and the average net profit is about 42k a day from selling cars. I've had a few days where I've done about 150~200 net profit but they were far between. Also, most of the lots I know of especially some you named did not really own the lots they used, nor they last long enough to actually be a problem. Those numbers would be way more reasonable for a Weekly net profit report than a daily to be honest. Unless you sell Pariah's all day.

 

Regulating them should happen on enforcing business registration and purchase of land to host the lots, so far, I've seen people host lots on Public lots which is against the law and that is an IC issue which should be enforced by PD and GOV.

Edited by Vash Baldeus
Link to comment
3 hours ago, Vash Baldeus said:

As I know the owner of Denov was banned here.

 

I do not know where you've pulled those daily numbers, but I've done my average math of past 4 months running my own lot, and the average net profit is about 42k a day from selling cars. I've had a few days where I've done about 150~200 net profit but they were far between. Also, most of the lots I know of especially some you named did not really own the lots they used, nor they last long enough to actually be a problem. Those numbers would be way more reasonable for a Weekly net profit report than a daily to be honest. Unless you sell Pariah's all day.

 

Regulating them should happen on enforcing business registration and purchase of land to host the lots, so far, I've seen people host lots on Public lots which is against the law and that is an IC issue which should be enforced by PD and GOV.

Yes, the owner of Denov was banned for unrelated reasons. The numbers were our daily revenue and profits, as the table was the way we kept track of our stock (updating it after buying or selling a vehicle, every time). I'm sure we weren't the only ones with that profit.

Link to comment
6 minutes ago, Aellerix said:

Yes, the owner of Denov was banned for unrelated reasons. The numbers were our daily revenue and profits, as the table was the way we kept track of our stock (updating it after buying or selling a vehicle, every time). I'm sure we weren't the only ones with that profit.

Wasn't he ban for the exact same reason? Poor portrayal of character? Pretty sure I remember it was related to his dealership itself.

 

EDIT: That's besides the point. The lots have to stop. Have proper interiors that house cars instead of parking lots. Octavian is an amazing example of how you should do it right.

Edited by effion
Link to comment
15 minutes ago, effion said:

Wasn't he ban for the exact same reason? Poor portrayal of character? Pretty sure I remember it was related to his dealership itself.

 

EDIT: That's besides the point. The lots have to stop. Have proper interiors that house cars instead of parking lots. Octavian is an amazing example of how you should do it right.

Sadly moving cars into interiors or exteriors requires admin help, since to this day Garages fuck up and when you enter the garage after Pressing K while in car, you need to spawn it inside the int using /vget opens and when you select a car it says you need to be outside which is a bug. So yes, that's a nice idea, but not all second-hand dealers do that, in my country I've seen more second hand dealers with outside parking lots than internal, the inside are usually the brand new dealers.

 

Allot of the new lots use public property, there are a lot of dealers that are operating for months now and are known. The new ones are trying to try and get into the business without actually having a property and a license. My lot for example we are registered business since about September 2019 at minimum along with having ownership of the lot we use and an office right next to it. So not all do it for the money, my character ended up dealing in that because IC events lead my character there no OOC. I prefer letting IC dictate.

Edited by Vash Baldeus
Link to comment
18 minutes ago, Vash Baldeus said:

Sadly moving cars into interiors or exteriors requires admin help, since to this day Garages fuck up and when you enter the garage after Pressing K while in car, you need to spawn it inside the int using /vget opens and when you select a car it says you need to be outside which is a bug. So yes, that's a nice idea, but not all second-hand dealers do that, in my country I've seen more second hand dealers with outside parking lots than internal, the inside are usually the brand new dealers.

 

Allot of the new lots use public property, there are a lot of dealers that are operating for months now and are known. The new ones are trying to try and get into the business without actually having a property and a license. My lot for example we are registered business since about September 2019 at minimum along with having ownership of the lot we use and an office right next to it. So not all do it for the money, my character ended up dealing in that because IC events lead my character there no OOC. I prefer letting IC dictate.

Ah, my apologies - I didn't know that it requires so much admin intervention and troubles - but still a better location would be nice. I've seen one place called Sunset Autos. It looks like a decent place for a car dealership because it's not a parking lot. But if you take into example the two dealerships at Rockford Hills and one at Mirror Park(don't remember names) then you will understand what I am talking about.

We can even exclude the Mirror Park one right now because they do have an actual office(although I've never been taken inside) but Rockford Hills dealerships are borderline stupid. It's a parking spot and has no office.

Link to comment
7 minutes ago, effion said:

Ah, my apologies - I didn't know that it requires so much admin intervention and troubles - but still a better location would be nice. I've seen one place called Sunset Autos. It looks like a decent place for a car dealership because it's not a parking lot. But if you take into example the two dealerships at Rockford Hills and one at Mirror Park(don't remember names) then you will understand what I am talking about.

We can even exclude the Mirror Park one right now because they do have an actual office(although I've never been taken inside) but Rockford Hills dealerships are borderline stupid. It's a parking spot and has no office.

Yes, I agree, my lot is also located in a spot similar to what Sunset looks like, private lot, not public.

Link to comment
15 minutes ago, effion said:

Ah, my apologies - I didn't know that it requires so much admin intervention and troubles - but still a better location would be nice. I've seen one place called Sunset Autos. It looks like a decent place for a car dealership because it's not a parking lot. But if you take into example the two dealerships at Rockford Hills and one at Mirror Park(don't remember names) then you will understand what I am talking about.

We can even exclude the Mirror Park one right now because they do have an actual office(although I've never been taken inside) but Rockford Hills dealerships are borderline stupid. It's a parking spot and has no office.

Owner of sunset autos here. Way ahead of you and we actually tried many different spots before being told by admins they weren’t suitable. We worked with the property management team to acquire the place where we are now and was told it was the most suitable place possible. 
 

Also, as mentioned by Vash, we have an interior where we were planning on displaying high end vehicles but due to the issues with entering the garage with vehicles practically requires an admin to tp every vehicle you want shown every day, it’s not practical.

 

Speaking on the topic in general,  you’ll notice a lot of people are around Sunset not actually just to buy and sell cars but mainly for the RP. 

Edited by Epic
  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...