AE 640: How to Buy a Second-Hand Car in Australia transcript powered by Sonix—the best audio to text transcription service

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Alright, guys, guess where we are? In my new car and I wanted to do a video today. We just turned the air-con down, so that you can actually hear me. I wanted to do a video today about buying a new car. The process that I went through and also why I'm giving away my old car to one of these guys for free. We're going to be running a competition and you guys, one of you guys who signed up to something at Aussie English will win my old wagon, which is a beast, right?

She is old, reliable, cheap to repair and a really good family car, first family car and road trip car, but obviously now having two cars. I don't need a second car because kill can't currently drive. Anyway, we're going to head down the beach and I will give you the lowdown on what it was like buying a new car and the competition, ok? See you there.

Here we are. We're at the beach, the best thing at the moment is that holiday have finished, so all the people who normally come down to Ocean Grove over the holidays and all the kids, especially, have gone back to school and those people have gone back to Melbourne to wherever they came from. So, it's a lot more peaceful. And you will know that because the beach is absolutely empty on a day like this anyway.

So, today I wanted to make a video about this my new car, I'm looking forward to chatting about it and telling you about the process of what I did and how I researched it, everything like that. So, I'll jump back in the car, but first check out this, loads of work going on down here at the moment because all the sand is riding away. So, I've been doing this for ages and you can actually hear the drills and everything all the way from back where I am on the other side of Ocean Grove.

Anyway, let's jump back in the car. Alright, guys, welcome back to inside the Car. Anyway, so I wanted to chat about buying this car in the process and obviously also tell you about how and why I'm giving away the other car. So, I did a podcast episode yesterday and that'll be up on the podcast, I'll probably link it up here or up here, I can never remember which way around these videos go once I actually publish it, I think it's up here. We'll see. Anyway, I spoke about my thanks to you guys because you're the reason that I could get this cast. So, that episode was more about why I got this car important to get in this car, how long it took me to get this car.

So, go check that out if you want to see or say you want to listen to more about that. But the nutshell review of that episode was effectively that I bought this car because I wanted something safer for my family. As you can see, the child seat back here for Noah, right? I wanted something a little newer, I wanted something that was more comfortable for going on longer road trips with the family, something that Kel would enjoy, something that she'd be safe learning to drive in. So, that was the reason I bought it. The reason that I bought it also, I guess, the second reason is because of you guys who have purchased any of my stuff from Aussie English. So, it was a big thank you to you guys in that episode because you all the reason that I could purchase a car like this because without your support was the English doesn't exist and I have to get a different job using my PhD or making coffees or working in a restaurant again, you know?

So, it was a massive thank you to you guys for supporting me and allowing me to get this car. Now, let me tell you about the process of getting this car. So, I was doing research galore online. I was going crazy, doing my research, looking into different cars, reading reviews. I mean, you don't have to go that crazy if you're not keen, but I would recommend doing your research, I was reading an article online that was talking about the amount of decision making that goes into buying a new car. And they were saying that the average person spends three hours deciding what car they're going to buy, three hours, where when they're going to spend a comparable amount of money on something like a holiday, they spend three weeks deciding where they're going to go, how much they're going to spend, where they're going to stay, everything like that. So, that seemed crazy to me when I was reading this article, they were really, I guess, questioning why people do that. They buy cars based much more on emotion and the the idea, the feel, I guess, of certain brands, but when it comes to spending the same amount of money on something like a holiday, which is very transient, right? You don't get to drive your holiday around for eight to 10 years, for example, whereas with a car, you are spending tens of thousands of dollars, potentially, maybe even hundreds of thousands if you're lucky enough.

And that thing, that car, is going to stay with you for most likely years and years to come, right? So, you're going to be using that thing. So, it's ironic, it's weird that you would spend very little time doing your research. Now, I went crazy with research because I wanted something that was affordable that I had saved up enough money to be able to buy, obviously, I didn't want a loan. I wanted to buy this outright, so that I was buying it with money that I'd saved up. And I'm not paying a bank or a car dealership or anything like that interest. So, that was the first thing. I lived within my means, I saved up first, then I chose the car that I could buy outright, right? With the money that I had, no loans, typically no loans if you can avoid it or, you know, maybe if you can somehow claim it on tax for work and stuff like that, it might make sense, but typically try and avoid loans. So, I did that. I saved up $20000 thinking that's going to be enough, hopefully. And I'd have to spend more than that, but it should be enough to get a relatively new car that's safe and that is good for those things that I outlined before, road trips and the like, ok?

And then I started looking at SUV, so I decided, I thought, what do I want from this car? I wanted to be safe, I wanted to be relatively big, so that I can fit things in it, people or camping gear or surfboards. I wanted it to have leather because I just like leather, it's easy to clean with children as well, I wanted it to have under a hundred thousand kilometres, just so that I knew I wouldn't need to be repairing it all the time. I wanted it to be cheap to repair, so again, that limited me on certain brands of cars. And we might talk about them in a bit. What else did I want? I wanted it to be diesel, so I wanted it to be more fuel efficient and I wanted it to be cheaper to run, right? So, those were those things I was trying to work out. What do I want? I also wanted seven seats if possible, just in case, right? Just in case we were doing a quick trip down to the beach with more than five people or to do it more comfortably, so I got this car with two seats in the back that fold down nicely and you can just store stuff on top them or you can fold them out and put two extra people in.

So, those were the main criteria. So, the first thing was to have a think 'what do I want out of the car that I'm going to buy?'. Before you start looking at cars and think, 'that's a nice car, I'd really like to buy that car', think about what do you want first and then you sort of have to work out which of those things was most important. So, you know, you've got all these different factors and you have to kind of work out, you know, they're all a trade-off, right? Some of them you'll get, some of them you won't get. So, for instance, if you want really low kilometres, you're going to have to pay more money, if you want a new car, you're going to have to pay more money. So, you have to work within the range that you have, the amount of money that you have and try and maximise all of those factors. So, as new as possible, as lower kilometres as possible, as safe as possible, as big as possible, etc.

So, I decided on an SUV with leather. They pretty much all come with leather today. I looked online, all of them pretty much come with diesel, there are a few brands that don't. I was looking at the different reviews to look at which cars car experts recommend, so there was a really good channel on YouTube called autoexpert.tv, I believe, I'll link it below. But he's great. He's an Australian guy who reviews a lot of cars that are sold obviously in Australia and he was saying that for an SUV that's a seven seater, he recommended the KIYA or the Hyundai.

Another reason that I started looking into those cars was because I wanted something cheap to repair. A lot of cars that come to Australia may seem really luxurious, but generally the further they come to get here, the fewer parts that they get sent over here. So, the more expensive they are to repair. And I learned this is a lesson with my BMW that I bought emotionally when I was twenty-one, twenty-two. So, I bought a BMW, the guy who was selling it kind of tricked me, he said it was all fine, the engine was completely screwed, it had a blown head gasket, I should have done my homework, I tried to look around the engine bay, I had people come with me, they said it looked fine. But obviously a head gasket is pretty hard to tell if they've cleaned the oil away, it cost me once I got the car, I bought it, I took it to get repaired and the estimate initially was six thousand dollars to repair that because of all the work and the parts were so expensive. So, even though German luxury cars may seem appealing and you can probably find a lot of second hand ones cheap, the reason they're cheap is because they're so expensive to repair.

So, my biggest recommendation for any of you guys is don't buy things like Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Jaguar, any of those cars that come from Europe or Britain don't get those second hand, if they're out of warranty and you can't afford them new, they're going to cost you an arm and a leg to repair, ok? So, that is why I stayed away from those brands. The cheap brands, the reliable brands are things like forward Toyota, Hyundai, Kia. Pretty much anything from Japan or South Korea is really good because we have so many of them in Australia and they're so cheap to repair because there are so many parts in Australia. So, something like this KIA is ideal because it was so cheap to repair, and ironically, if you look at the prices for cars like this compared to BMWs, these are more expensive for the year because they hold their value better because people know they're cheaper to repair. They don't lower the price because they know they're a nightmare, they're a black hole of money.

So, that was pretty much what I did for a long time, I was then looking on websites like Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace and mostly carsales.com.au and trying to find the best deal I was doing at first for a week or two to get an idea of prices. So, you know, you can select the kind of cars you want. You can select the year, the kilometres, the price, and you can see all of the different models that are available in the country, the state, your town, and then get an idea, get a feel for the different prices and what people expect. Once you've done that for a little while and again, obviously, it requires patience. I did this for probably two months, three months. I was just getting online, I was looking at prices on a weekly basis of the different cars that I wanted and I was waiting to see if a deal would pop up.

After you've done that for a number of weeks, you'll get an idea of the price range, the kilometre range, the quality range for the amount of money that you can spend on certain brands that you're looking at. And again, a good idea is to have a couple of brands in mind, so that you have options. Don't just settle in on one thing because sometimes you want choice, right? You want to have options, and that's what happened with me, I had settled on a Hyundai Santa Fe, I wanted one of those, a Highlander, which is the same as this car, but... because KIA and Hyundai are owned by the same company. The chassis, the engine, everything is the same, but the bodywork and the seats and everything is different inside the car.

So, initially I wanted the Hyundai. However, they were more expensive because I guess they're more sought after than the KIA is. And, so that was a trade-off. I had to decide, well, do I want to pay $5000 extra for the same car, effectively? Maybe a few extra doodads, but you know, just because I want the badge of Hyundai. So, I was getting an idea. I was looking online, there were a few good deals popping up for Hyundai, but I kept looking at KIA Sorentos as well just to see if anything good would come up. Now, the average Hyundai that was a 2012 model with leather, with seven seats that was a Santa Fe Highlander was about twenty three thousand dollars with more than one hundred and thirty thousand kilometres on that car, usually. So, I was like, ok, that's the basic idea of what I'm going to be looking at, but I'll probably end up getting. I kept looking at the Sorento, the KIA Sorentos, and this one popped up for $20,000 and it only had 59,000 kilometres. I couldn't believe it, right? Really low kilometres, which is really, really good. Usually that kind of low kilometres in the same Hyundai would push it up to probably $30,000, $32,000 from the research I was doing.

So, I jumped on it. I was watching this for a few days, I sent some messages on car sales asking if it was still available. I had a look at the photos, I had a look online about potential problems that this model might have. Has it been recalled? I did a check on the registration. Has it been in any accidents? Has it been stolen? You can do that through car sales. So, again, do your research, make sure that the car is in order. But also, it's not financed, it's not stolen. It hasn't been written off, so you don't have these problems later on in case you buy it in cash and you haven't done your research. So, I did that. I kept an eye on it, I chatted to the guy and within a few days he dropped it by another thousand dollars. So, it was only $19000 this time. And I was like, ok, I need to get this car. There are no other deals currently available for a compatible car, one that is really low kilometres, relatively new leather, seven seats, a Kia Hyundai, really safe, lots of air bags, everything like that. So, I jumped on it. I sent him a message and this is where I tried to bargain him down further.

I said to him, 'if I get it today, would you take $18000 in cash?'. So, you can quite often do that in Australia. Bargaining isn't a problem. You can always ask, right? Obviously, you don't say, 'I'll give you two grand. I'll give you two thousand dollars'. You know, you have to try and do what's fair, which is usually about 10 percent of the price, right? So, I did that, but he said, he returned, he replied to me 'It's a firm $19000 because I have three other people coming to see the car on the weekend. If you don't come and get it'.

That's when I knew I needed to get it, because there's obviously a bit of competition, assuming he was telling me the truth. So, I drove up to Melbourne with my dad in his car because if I got the car, I would obviously need to drive the car home and someone else with me would have to drive the car that we took up to Melbourne home. I went to Westpac and I decided to take the money out in cash because I can't transfer, I've never transferred that amount of money online, and I kind of I didn't, I wasn't sure if he would be comfortable seeing that I had transferred the money and just being like, yeah, take my car.

So, I took the money out. Unfortunately, I didn't give the bank notice. This is another note for you guys. If you're going to take out a substantial amount of money from the bank, let just have a sip here, had this here the whole time, but I haven't had any, you need to give them warnings, so that they make sure they have the money on them. So, I walked in thinking, you know, it's a bank, they'll have the money. And I said, you know, I need to take out $19,000. And the lady was like, 'I'll have to check', and it ended up being in $50 notes, so it was twice the amount. You know, mass wise of money, right? So, I was carrying around a sack of $20,000. The most amount of money I'd ever seen in my life, made me very nervous.

So, I got that money. I got in dad's car, we drove up to Melbourne. I got out and I met the guy. I believe his name was Andrew, who was selling the car. So, again, I'll talk about what I did there. So, the etiquette there was that, you know, you try and be amicable. You say hello, you say g'day, you try and develop a relationship with the person who's about to sell you something. You know, that's just, that's just how it's done.

So, we got chatting, found out where he was from, that he'd been down to Ocean Grove, my hometown recently. So, we were just talking about different stuff as well as the car. At the same time, he was showing me how the car works. I was asking him, you know, has it been in an accident? What's your reason for selling it? And he showed me the car across the road, which was brand new. You know, another family car, but newer. So, that made sense, right? Because sometimes people will be selling it because there's a problem with the engine or something dodgy is going on. So, it's always good to try and get a feeling of whether or not that's happening. Had a look around the car, he showed me everything. He was pretty honest about, you know, there's a few scratches on the front, but other than that, it's mechanically perfect. It's always been serviced at KIA, I said IKEA, he showed me the service record, he showed me, yeah, everything else.

I asked to look at the engine, I made sure there was no oil around the engine, that it looked clean. I had a look at the gaskets and other parts underneath the car to make sure that nothing was broken. At least that I could see. So, even if you're not car savvy, you just have a look around to see if you notice anything that looks bad, right? Broken rubber seals, rusted metal oil that's everywhere, liquid that's everywhere. I asked him if he turned the car on yet that day, because it's always good for you to be the first person to turn the car on.

Turned it on. Sounded like a dream, was working really well. Then I said, can I take it for a spin? Right? Can I take it for a test drive? And he said, 'That's fine, but I'm going to come with you as if that's ok'. Sometimes people will allow you to just take the car because, you know, you've left your car there, so it's pretty obvious you're not going to disappear, at least they'd hope. They might ask you to leave something like the keys to your other car, maybe a phone or something. You know, they'll ask for some sort of security. In this case, he wanted to come with me, which wasn't a problem. We just kept chatting and I just kept driving around to sort of get a feel of what it was like. Did it sound right? Did it handle well? Did they feel like there were any mechanical issues? Everything like that is running well, the electronics working, etc. It was perfect. So we came back, I said to Andrew, 'I'm just going to have a chat to my dad about things, say what he thinks, and then I'll let you know whether or not I'm going to grab it, whether or not I'm going to buy it'. So he went inside to his house and just said, knock on the door. You know, tell me what happens after you've chatted to your dad.

I went and had a chat to dad, said I love it. I want to get it. And he said, you know, it's a really good deal. Low Ks, new car, cheap price, good quality. I reckon you should get it. So, that's another one. Get a second opinion from someone else, right? The only other thing that I probably could have done better if I'd had more time and wanted to spend a bit of money was potentially get a mechanic to look at the car. Whether you know a mechanic, you can take a mechanic with you or you organise an appointment near you where you're buying the car and just say, I want to buy this car. And I organised for it to come and have a look for you to have a look at the car, at your workshop on this day, at this time. And you have to obviously organise that with both the mechanic and the person selling the car. And then you can sort of get feedback independently about the engine and how the car runs. I didn't do that, I was willing to take the risk, and I kind of had to look around and it seemed fine. And because KIAs are so cheap to repair, I wasn't too afraid. So, I went back inside, well, went over to his house, knocked on the door and said, yeah, I want to buy it, the only condition is I get a drink of water because I'm really thirsty. We went in, he gave me the forms.

So, there are a bunch of forms that you have to fill out with your licence number, the amount the car, the amount that the car is worth, the market value. So, not how much you paid for the car, but the market value of the car. What the, I guess, you know, Vic Roads, what what independent people say the car is worth. You know, if it was, say, being insured and written off, how much is the market value of the car? So, you put that down, you fill out the forms, you make sure you have his information. You make sure you have your information, because this stuff you have to take to Vic Roads here in Victoria, the I guess, government roads and cars registration place you go there and this is where you transfer across the car into your name. The registration of the car into your name.

So, you make sure you have all that. He counted the money, which is fair enough. You know, it's a lot of money. So, I gave that to him. I said, you know, it's a deal, he counted the money whilst I was filling out the forms. And after that, we shook hands. That was it, gave me the keys, then I drove home, and that's all she wrote. The car is now mine, so. Yeah. What a story, guys. That's the process, though. So, the point of this episode was to tell you about the process of buying a new car. The dos and don'ts, the sort of protocol that you go through when meeting people, when doing your research and also what kinds of brands.

So, again, to reiterate, if I were you and I am on a limited budget, I would not buy second-hand German or British European cars. They are incredibly expensive to repair because the parts are so few in Australia that they have to bring them in overseas. One example was that say the headline on this car breaks, I can't imagine it costing more than $100 to fix. Really, to be honest. If you bought and a new Audi R8, a new one, a second-hand one that depreciated from two hundred and fifty thousand to eighteen... eighteen thousand?... depreciated from two hundred and fifty thousand, to seventy five thousand dollars. It seems like a deal, right? The light on the front of the car would cost $6,000 to repair and two months to come into the country. So stay away from German cars, guys, do your research. How much are they going to be to repair? What are parts like? And do they have a lot of problems? German cars aren't built to last decades and decades and decades and just go, go, go, go, go.

They have so much technology in them that they break down after five, seven, 10 years all the time and they cost you a shitload to take care of. So, avoid those, anything Japanese is where your money is. So, things like Toyota, Mitsubishi, Honda, those are great, or South Korean, right? Things like Hyundai and KIA, they are really good brands as well, especially if you guys have a family and you want something like this, ok?

So, now I'm off my pedestal there. What's the story with my other car? So, I was thinking again, if you've heard that episode, you'll know. I was thinking, I need to get rid of this car. I want to sell it, it's not worth very much. It's worth two thousand, two and a half thousand dollars, but instead of selling it, I want to give it to one of you guys, ok? I want to give it away, so we're going to do a competition, guys, where obviously you will need a an Australian licence, so that you can get the car in your name when you win the car. You can transfer it across into your name, you'll need to come and pick the car up. So, there are a few conditions there. And the other ones are that you need to have purchased something from Aussie English. You need to have been someone who helped me buy this car by purchasing something from Aussie English weather in the past or this month. So, any new sign ups, if you sign up for the Academy, if you sign up for the Premium Podcast, if you buy any of my courses, you will instantly be able to enter to buy or to win my old car. So, you won't have to buy a new car because I know how hard you guys work. You get to Australia, you need transport. It's not easy to sort out.

So, I want to help you out there. Now, that's the first way of entering. Well, the first part of entering, purchasing something from Aussie English, whether in the past or now, you know, signing up for my courses, signing up for the memberships. After that, I need you to send me an email that tells me how this car is going to improve your life in Australia. That's it. You can send me a short video telling me how the car is going to improve your life, and maybe you can get to work. Maybe you can drop the kids off at school, maybe you want to go on a road trip so you can be as descriptive as possible, right? Let me know, or you can write a short email of a few hundred words. And again, let me know how that car is going to improve your life in Australia, ok? So, hopefully that makes sense. Again, to reiterate, you need to have purchased something from Aussie English weather this month, I'm going to run it for 30 days, or in the past, you need to send me a video or an email telling me how this car is going to change your life. You need to agree to the fact that you'll have to come and pick up the car from somewhere around Geelong, right? I can probably drive a little bit of the way, but it needs to be, I'm not driving to Sydney, ok?, or I'm not driving to Darwin. You need to be able to come and get the car.

And you also need to have a licence in Australia to allow you to register that car in your name, right? You have to get the car registered in your name. I'm not letting you drive it around for the rest of your life in my name, right? It's going to be your car. So, that's about it. That's all I really wanted to cover. Thank you so much again, guys, for supporting me. This is a very small thing that I can do to say thank you to you, guys. I should mention what the prises are. There are going to be three prises, right? They'll be first place, which will be the car and 12 months membership in the Aussie English Academy. So, you'll have access to everything in the Academy and the podcast for 12 months for free. If you have a current membership. It'll just be added to the top of that. If you don't, you'll be able to sign up for that membership and you'll just automatically get 12 months free at the start of it. The second prise will be 12 months free in the Academy and the third prise will be one month free in the Academy. So yeah, lots of information there, guys. I will put together a page sort of explaining it again just so that you are aware of what's going on. But I'm looking forward to seeing your entries. Anyway, thanks again so much, guys. And I will check to see this.

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