FishOn - As a seller - you actually negotiate price BEFORE the buyer comes to see the car? I always thought people trying to negotiate price without even seeing the item for sale could not be serious buyers. For that reason, when someone tries to take that approach, I have been resisting negotiating the price but instead encourage them to come test drive and see the car first. Since I've been through this a couple times with this ad, that may mean I've been "turning off" potential legitimate buyers. Comments? Perhaps I need to change my approach.

At any rate, the first person to actually test drive the car did so a couple of hours ago, and is very interested - he's trying to set up an appointment with his mechanic tomorrow. I will accompany him, and if all goes well, he will be paying in cash. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

I met the person in the police station lobby. I rode along on the drive. My wife followed us. The next day we did the deal in the lobby. Our local police station encourages it.

As a potential buyer, I want to know the asking price in advance, and won't know if it too high until after I check out the goods. I'm not agreeing on anything or making an offer before the test drive. I will just acknowledge that I know the asking price.

If the asking price is not in the ballpark to begin with, I won't waste time checking out the goods.

Our PD has parking spaces allocated in the PD parking lot for doing CL deals.

UPDATE:

Transaction complete! Seller came today and closed the deal, and paid in cash. However, one unexpected issue came up:

Buyer, wisely, did a Carfax check. I gave him the VIN, knowing the car had never been in an accident - I was the original owner.

Lo and Behold, Carfax showed the car was in an accident when it had 900 miles! My wife and I were shocked, and neither of us remember any accidents at all with this car. At first I was afraid the buyer was going to use this to either back out of the deal, or lower the price further. He did not. He said even if it was in an accident, at 900 miles, if the car had problems, they would certainly have manifested themselves by now (Car now has about 120K miles on it). I was very thankful the buyer was very reasonable about this. But this raises the question: Wife and I are positive no accident ever happened with this car. When we bought it new at the dealership, it had 22 miles on it, and the accident was supposedly reported at 900 miles. I definitely owned the car at that mileage, and no one else drove the car except the wife and I.

Should I inquire with Carfax as to what the accident report was all about, and attempt to have it removed, or should I just forget about it at this point?

It makes me wonder if I should run occasional Carfax reports on all my vehicles periodically in case something else gets erroneously reported.

Interesting....
Now we know the Carfax reports may not always be accurate.

I would just forget about it at this point... you've already sold it, so why worry?