(Since this post is a bit long, feel free to just go to the bottom of the post for my two questions in bold if you are interested in responding but don't have enough time to read everything)
I have sold a vehicle one time in my life for my parents, years ago, and accepted a cashier’s check and fortunately it all worked out. However, that time the amount of money involved was much less than what I am dealing with now. Now, I have to sell a car for my parents and the vehicle will sell for around $25,000 most likely. That’s a bit much for me to not take more precautions. I’ve done some research on this topic and am still a tad iffy about what is the most secure/safe way to exchange $25,000 between strangers for a car. Here is what I found:
1) Cash is best, but with $25,000 it is a bit of an ordeal dealing with that many bills I would think. I’m not sure most buyers would feel comfortable to pay for the car in straight cash when the amount of money involved is so high. I’m okay with this option, but not sure if it makes the most sense. I’ve heard someone once say that you can open an account at the buyer’s bank so that they can just take the cash out of their account and then you just redeposit it back right there in the same bank. Not sure exactly if that is what they said, but it was something like that.
2) Cashier’s checks are better than personal checks, but they are not full proof even when you take precautions. To be more specific, when accepting a cashier’s check you are supposed to go to the buyer’s bank where the cashier’s check will be issued from. You stand in line with them and see the cashier’s check handed over from the bank teller to the buyer, written out to you. This is to ensure that the cashier’s check is authentic and not fraudulent. Then you do the title paperwork for the car, etc., and exchange documents and the deal is done. The issue with this is that the buyer can still report the cashier’s check as stolen, lost, etc to the issuing bank and they can sometimes void it this way and then later the check can bounce after you’ve deposited it and you're essentially out of luck.
3) Wire transfer. I’ve never done this but apparently this is considered by some people to be safer than a cashier’s check. If this is true, then maybe I should go this route. The issue with this is the buyer must first deposit the money into my account, so the buyer doesn’t get much protection in this case since I have to wait until the funds clear (I believe it takes a few hours). The other issue, is once again, I have heard that if the wire transfer is done from the buyer’s own personal computer that he can call the bank and say that his computer was hacked and he never initiated the wire transfer himself and the bank can actually reverse the transfer.
So my questions are:
1) What do you consider to be the safest and most reasonable method from the seller’s viewpoint of exchanging such a large amount of money? Just exchanging cold hard cash, or going to the bank with them to get a cashier’s check, or wire transfer?
2) If you choose the cashier’s check route, I am confused about one part of it. When you go to the bank with the buyer and see the teller hand over a cashier’s check written out to you, I have read that the best step is to just “cash” the cashier’s check right there at the buyer’s bank and have another cashier’s check written out to you so the original cashier’s check is no longer able to be voided by the buyer with a lost/stolen claim on the original cashier’s check. How does this even work? Most banks can’t just give you $25,000 in cash I believe and that also seems a bit overkill for them to count out $25,000 just for you to go and give it back to them for another cashier’s check. Or do people mean that when you “cash” a cashier’s check at the buyer’s bank that you just tell them you want them to cash it out in the form of another cashier’s check written out to you again? I was a bit confused about that
Thanks for any help with this. I’m trying to understand how to do this safely because I would prefer to sell my own vehicles in the future too, but if there isn’t really a safe way to do it then I will have to deal with just getting less money and going to a dealer to trade it in or going to CarMax.