If you are considering selling your car and are debating about whether to handle it privately or work through a dealer trade in, you might want to scrap the idea of heading to your local dealer and manage it through your own means.

The reason for this is simple. You are more likely to reap a bigger profit if you handle the transaction privately and on your own.

Of course, there are things that you have to do on your end in order to get a bigger profit. Just as you wouldn’t sell your house with a faulty furnace or broken windows, you shouldn’t try to sell a car that looks like it has been through the ringer.

Therefore, in order to get the best offer, you need to clean your car up in order to make someone interested in purchasing it. This means unless you are an expert in car detailing, don’t try it yourself. Take your car to a detailing service or hire a service to come to your home or office and do it while you go on about your day. This might cost a little more than doing it yourself, but you are guaranteed to have a car that sparkles and an interior that is more likely to resemble the smell of a new car and not a car that smells like wet dog.

Next, take your car to a mechanic and ask for a complete inspection. If there are problems, get them fixed and invest in new parts for any area that has seen better days. The sheer idea that you are putting money into fixing trouble areas will pay off when a potential buyer checks it out.

Finally, before you post an ad in a newspaper or online, research the Kelley Blue Book worth of the car for its particular make and model. This will allow you to get an idea of what is a reasonable price to ask for the car. Then, and this is just so you are prepared, because consumers do ask it when going through private transactions, pull a copy of your Carfax report. You can pull this report at carfax.com and impress any potential buyer with thorough information on the history of the car that they are considering making their own.