When putting the car up for auction, the seller must determine the starting price（スタート価格）of the auction and the desired sale price（希望価格）.
Starting price is the price from which the auction starts. The desired price is the price below which the seller does not want to sell his car. If the auction does not reach the desired price, the car remains unsold. Buyers of cars at the auction do not initially know the desired price, but when the auction reaches it, an alert lights up ( 売り切り), which means car will be definetly sold.
How to set the starting price of a car at a car auction?
Setting a starting price and a desired selling price is a challenge when first putting a car up for auction. This time I would like to explain how to set the starting price and the desired sale price with a concrete example.
Mr. X , who decided to sell his beloved car through a used car auction, thought that the mileage was low and the car was in good condition, so he gave the car to an agency and started consulting. The merchant said, "I think a used car of this class would cost about 1.5 million yen...". How then to correctly set the starting price and the desired selling price?
First, let's look at the starting price. Unlike the desired price, many feel that the opening price doesn't have much of an impact on the auction. Whatever the starting price, if the car is good, there will be many applications, and if the car is bad, then there will be no applications. But this way of thinking is not entirely correct. Setting the starting price often affects the final winning bid and will give you a hint on what bet to place. For example, let's say that in this case you set the starting price to 100,000 yen. In this case, the bidders think: “Huh? A car in such good condition only costs 100,000 yen?” If you do, you might think, "100,000 yen for such a good condition... Is the seller hiding something?"
If you set the starting price to 1.5 million yen, bidder might think, “Wow, this is expensive. Let's not bet this time." If you set the price too low, the auction may end in a recession, and vice versa, it is not good to set the price too high. It is important to set a starting price. It is necessary to set a price that is neither too high nor too low, and this will make bidders think: “Is it possible to bid at this price?” .
Below is the disired price. In above case, the recommended selling price is 1.5 million yen. However, this is only a guideline. For example, if you don't really care about the price and want to sell your car quickly, you should set the price a little lower. Of course, the possibility of selling 1.4 million yen from 1.5 million yen and 1.3 million yen from 1.4 million yen will increase. On the other hand, if you feel that 1,500,000 yen is not enough and that you can sell it at a higher price, you should increase your desired selling price. 1.6 million yen than 1.5 million yen and 1.7 million yen than 1.6 million yen are less likely to be sold, but profits will be greater if they are sold.
Also, if you don't care about price at all, you can choose not to set an desired price. Such cars are called "sold cars"(売り切り). A used car listed for sale will be sold as soon as there is at least one bid, so this method is recommended for people who want to get rid of the car as soon as possible. However, if you don't set your desired selling price, the likelihood of buying low will naturally increase. We can say that selling a car at a selling price is a double-edged sword.
Starting price and desired selling price from the point of view of bidders
So far, we have considered the opening price and the desired sale price from the point of view of the seller, but now we would like to consider the opening price and the desired sale price from the point of view of the bidder. From the bidder's point of view, the starting price is a measure of how confident the seller is in the car. If the starting price is high, you can understand that "Oh, this seller thinks that this car can be sold at a certain price." Conversely, if the opening price is low, you can see that you don't have the confidence to sell high.
But once the bidding starts and heats up, the starting price doesn't matter as much anymore. Rather, the desired price matters. Because bidders cannot know the desired selling price in advance, psychological warfare becomes important. Even if you bid the highest bid in the auction, if the price does not exceed the desired selling price, you will not be able to make a successful bid. Even so, if you bid too high, you may end up buying at a price well above the desired selling price.
This is psychological warfare. The seller is a professional, but the buyer is also a professional. Of course, the seller will play with the desired selling price to sell as high as possible, and bidders will anticipate this and attempt to successfully bid at a price slightly above the desired selling price. The conflict around here is not only skill, but also luck. It's not as relevant to the average person looking to buy, but it's nice to know that there's such conflict going on behind the scenes of used car auctions.
What is the best difference between the starting price and the asking price?
In the auction, the price will increase by 3,000 yen or 5,000 yen each time you click the (bid) button. Therefore, the greater the difference between the initial price and the offer price, the more bids are required. If the starting price and the desired selling price are too high, it is possible that even with a large number of bids, the auctioned bids will not reach the desired selling price. Conversely, if you set your starting price closer to your desired sale price, the chance of reaching your desired sale price increases.
However, if the starting price and the desired selling price are set close to each other, the starting price will naturally rise and the desired selling price will decrease. Balancing in this area is very difficult, and it's not something that amateurs are capable of, thinking about this and that. Be sure to set the starting price and desired sale price with the auction agent. If you give it to them, they will give you the highest possible selling price.
Recommendations for bidders
In case start price is in the range from 0 to 50,000 jpy and it is not exibited in "low price corner", "urikiri corner" and corners like this, there no the desired price, you should bid at least 20,000 jpy higher than starting price.
Example: start price 50,000 jpy your bid 50,000 jpy+20,000 jpy=70,000 jpy - have chance to buy
Example: start price 50,000 jpy your bid 55,000 jpy- no chance to buy
In case start price range from 60,000 jpy to 100,000 jpy, you should bid at least 50,000 jpy higher than the start price.
In case start price range from 110,000 jpy - 500,000 jpy, you should bid at least 100,000 jpy higher than the start price.
In case start price range from 600,000 jpy - 900,000 jpy, you should bid at least 200,000 jpy higher than the start price.
In case start price range from 1,000,000 jpy- 1,500,000 jpy, you should bid at least 500,000 jpy higher than the start price.
Thus the start price give us the hints for the bidding price.
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