Are these cars overpriced?

[spetz]

Hi guys,

In my hunt for buying a cheap daily I have been left with the impression that Honda Accords are overpriced.
Does anyone share the same idea?

Taking into account that a brand new Euro can be bought for only $29,000.
There are so many 94ish model Accords for 5-6K.
Also taking into account the other cars that can be bought for the same amount of money. Are these owners overly ambitious with what they think they can sell their cars for, or do they really sell for that much?

[HONTUNE]

I bought a 96 accord vti early this year for 3500 in good condition. They should be 3-4k

[senna]

A car is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it really.

Don't be afraid to bargain with people, with the economy the way it is everyone is trying to get as much as they can for anything, so the original asking price is often much more than what they will eventually accept for their car...

[spetz]

What do you mean the way the economy is?
Australia has a AAA economic rating and is unaffected by the global financial crisis with the AUD being record high.
I am not in Australia, I plan on going there in 10 months (hence my search for a cheap car). Is there something I am missing about how the economy is there???

[Fredoops]

What do you mean the way the economy is?
Australia has a AAA economic rating and is unaffected by the global financial crisis with the AUD being record high.
I am not in Australia, I plan on going there in 10 months (hence my search for a cheap car). Is there something I am missing about how the economy is there???

Australia WAS affected by the CFC, other wise our reserve bank wouldntve lowered the interest rates back then.

Australia has a 2 speed economy, anything related to natural resources is growing. Nothing else is.

As such australia is experiencing inflation when the ubdering economy is actually contracting (except mining of course)

We're kinda screwed.

[spetz]

Do you think there will be a real estate bubble?
To be honest all my money is in Euros and with the way Greece is going the Euro is extremely weak, and the AUD is too powerful. I am looking at the economy of China as well and think there are indications it will bubble which would send Australia down as well.

[senna]

As above ^^^

The country is ok, but individuals don't have alot of expendable income (as a whole) the rich will always be rich and the middle class will generally just stay where they are etc etc. This is a very general and broad overview though.

I am by no means rich, very middle class i guess you would say, i rent (mistake, should've stayed at home longer and bought a house!) but my wife and i want for nothing really and we have 3 cars - her daily, my daily and my weekend car. We are happy but i wouldn't say no to winning lotto!

Sorry for the thread hi-jack, just wanted to put things into perspective for you. While we don't have a heap of money, most of Australia is better off than most...

[spetz]

I think a lot of that is because of the mentality there. I have noticed that "normally" parents do not help out their kids financially and if anything ask for rent, which is mind boggling for me.
Anyway, for all it's short comings I really enjoyed living in Australia before and I hope to enjoy it again :)

[Fredoops]

Do you think there will be a real estate bubble?
To be honest all my money is in Euros and with the way Greece is going the Euro is extremely weak, and the AUD is too powerful. I am looking at the economy of China as well and think there are indications it will bubble which would send Australia down as well.

Theres been a real estate bubble for the last 10 years, it's just been artificially proped up the whole time by the government indirectly by things like tax concessions etc

PS: what part of europe are you from?

[dougie_504]

You can probably get those accords $1-2g cheaper. I sold a '98 top of the range for about $7g 18 months ago.

As for the economy the mining is holding us up as previously stated. The Aussie dollar will not get much stronger than it is. The reserve bank or whoever will limit the strength of the dollar to prevent people outsourcing internationally as this would destroy our economy and reduce internal productivity leading to unemployment etc. You can already see this starting in industries like retail which has suffered due to the dollar being strong and people buying products from overseas. Good for us, but bad for the economy.


Only thing guaranteed is that the dollar will drop later. It's a cyclic process.

[spetz]

I have also been reading speculations that the government had used wrong statistics to artificially create this housing crisis and raise the prices. Apparently they listed homeless people and people living in trailer parks as "prospective home buyers".
Usually the economy has to be going pretty poorly for the country to devalue it's currency and to be honest I would be surprised if Australia does this.

Fredoops I am from the Eastern Mediterranean

[Fredoops]

We don't have that many homeless people....

The Australian housing bubble was fueled by immigrants.... And people speculating in housing. Statistically those who owns houses on average owns more than one house. Why you ask?

The negative gearing tax scheme encourages people to go into massive debt to invest in housing.

Furthermore, government further pushes housing price up by giving a "first home owners grant"

AND, there's countless "educators" who gose around to sell seminars on "wealth creation" thru house investments..... Aka "get rich quick" scam artists.

As a result, an artificial demand was created pushing house prices thru the roof.

This whole situation is FUBAR. Those who buy house to invest keeps ranking up massive debts to push up housing prices. And those who want to buy to live can't rffin afford their own home.

Australian government debt is very good.

Private debt...... You don't wanna know.




Edit... Better not turn this into a macro and microeconomics, I've been warning the ASIC about some of the mortgage brokers (aka property investment advisor) practices for the past 5 years... All fell into deaf ears.

If you want to check out 2nd hand car pricing guide in this country, look here: www.redbook.com.au. It's a pricing guide for car dealers and shit.

[spetz]

Well this all points to a bubble. What do you think will happen to the economy as a whole though? It seems to be in a very ambivalent state.

As for the homeless people, it was not just them, but also people living in trailer parks as well, totaling some 250,000 people which were "prospective home buyers" which clearly had no intention or means to do so.

[Fredoops]

Well this all points to a bubble. What do you think will happen to the economy as a whole though? It seems to be in a very ambivalent state.

As for the homeless people, it was not just them, but also people living in trailer parks as well, totaling some 250,000 people which were "prospective home buyers" which clearly had no intention or means to do so.

It's not homeless people, it's the 100k immigrants call this place home every year. Now I'm not againest immigration (dear God no, 99% of them work hard to create a new life here. The problem is land management, for one of the most urbanized country in the world, we lack some serious urban planning.
Trailor park homes/spaces can be brought/sold, so techanically speaking they are in the housing market in a strange way, and there isn't many of them at all (this ain't the US, we only have so many trailer parks, and most of them are for tourism). Because the low income earners are usually in public housing


As to the bubble, that depends on how the Chinese bubble turn out. And how the eurozone turns out.

[spetz]

Well the eurozone is getting worse by the day. I think it is Merkels fault she delayed the bail out for Greece for so long and just made things so much worse. Maybe if they were bailed out earlier at half the cost things would be better.
The euro hit another record low today, 1 euro = $1.28.
I remember some years ago 1 euro was over $2
I just hope that this exchange rate does not remain the norm now

[SPQR]

I think a lot of that is because of the mentality there. I have noticed that "normally" parents do not help out their kids financially and if anything ask for rent, which is mind boggling for me....

Very observant. Most Aussie parents can't wait to kick their children out the door. But I think this helps them to stand on their own two feet; many into a life of 'non-wealth' (haha) where they quickly learn to blow all money on cars, opposite sex, alcohol and drugs to drown out their miserable poverty condition. Some make it through to have some money. Isn't it like that in Europe?

[Fredoops]

Not in more family-oriented cultures like Greece/Italy.

They are more hmmm "Chinese" in their approach

[SPQR]

Not in more family-oriented cultures like Greece/Italy.

They are more hmmm "Chinese" in their approach

Yeah, it was probably that Irish fellow Marc O'Polo that brought it back to Italy from China. hehe

[Fredoops]

Yeah, it was probably that Irish fellow Marc O'Polo that brought it back to Italy from China. hehe

Mah blame the Romans lol.


In all seriousness, there's problem with parents kicking kids out to soon, the kids wasnt told things like budgeting, credit control etc. that's what fks them up.

And school don't teach that crap anymore, gee te kids these days can't barely cook and clean..... That's just fail parenting IMO.

[FAT VTI]

To steer away from the economics side of this thread and return to the original question:
94-97 Honda Accords are worth differing prices due to the different models. Lets assume you can find the following models with under 200,000km (lets say 160K-175K).

EXI- no vtec, no leather seats, no sunroof- a very basic car but it will get you from A to B. Price- $2-3K.
VTI- Vtec (F22B1), no leather seats, no sunroof, a gay bumpstop which goes all the way around the middle of the car and looks horrible unless the colour is dark- $3-4K.
VTI-s- Vtec (F22B1) leather seats, sunroof, no gay bumpstop, climate control amongst other things- $5-6K.


these features may differ as some VTI would have had options bought and put on but the above is the basic difference (as well as cruise control but not sure if others have it- i do and I have a vti-s).

Therefore, paying 5-6K for a Honda, with Vtec and some luxury features which still stack up VERY well in comparison to later models is certainly warranted. You will generally have very few problems with a high km Honda (especially VTEC) in comparison to similar other cars around the same age with same km's.

If you compare this to lets say a camry of the same age, you may get it for around 1-2K cheaper or more, but it will still look like an ugly as **** 94-97 camry and will be bog standard. It'd be equivalent to getting an EXI which are very very standard...

My opinion- if you want a car that will go the distance, look good, have some nice features which are as good if not better than most newer cars and can find a clean VTI-S preferably (if not a VTI) then I'd say do it.