Sidebar: I'm selling this ( ) because...

One evening last week while browsing Seattle Craigslist I started to notice a lot of advertisements for cars/boats/stuff where the seller tell us why they’re selling.  I began to wonder, how common is this on Craigslist?  As an experiment I read every single car car for sale ad for a single day.  Why?  Because I wanted to know why people were selling their cars – not that any of the reasons made me want to buy their car from them.  The results:

Approximately 15% of the 300 or so advertisements included a reason for selling.  Within these advertisements, the reasons broke out as follows:

Moving	22.73%
Money trouble	13.64%
No Time	10.23%
Got better car (upgrade)	10.23%
Baby	10.23%
Too many cars	7.95%
Wrong car for me (trade)	7.95%
Parking	5.68%
Other	11.36%

25% of those ‘moving’ also told us that they’re moving out of the country.  I found that interesting.  I included back bills, rent due on Saturday, and similar as ‘money trouble’.  The ‘wrong car for me’ category captured people that were moving from a sedan to a truck or a convertible to a sedan or something similar.  The ‘other’ category included lost jobs, saving for a down payment, at least one car that didn’t work out for the demolition derby, and one ‘my daughter wants a 4-runner instead.’  It’s nice to want things.  A few people mentioned gas mileage.

Stories are fine.  I like stories.  I’ve been know to tell stories.  But sometimes one needs to be aware of the audience.  Some of the stories are vaguely interesting – new babies on the way or a job move out of the country.  Others really started to bother me.  The ones that bugged me most are the braggers (‘Upgrade’ at 10.23%).  These are the folks that tell us that they’re selling their 2002 BMW M3 because they just bought a 2005 BMW M3 and the four car garage is full and they need room for their H3. 

Craigslist is often viewed as a community and I realize that people like to share their story, but at the same time these stories usually aren’t relevant to the act of selling something and, in many cases, can put the sellers at a disadvantage.  The buying or selling of anything can be viewed as a negotiated act between two parties.  In any negotiations the control of information is key.  Buyers can be rather Machiavellian.  Do you really want to tell somebody that’s looking at your car that you have to sell it to pay your rent?  What’s the advantage to telling people that you haven’t been able to maintain it regularly so you should sell it – at full blue book value?  Why do you want to look like a (insert your own four or five letter word here) by telling us about how much you’re going to love your 53’ Nautor Swan once you’ve sold your 45’ boat that just isn’t big enough?