Options spell cash in the bank says BCA

Date: Thursday, January 22, 2009

Order your van with a sliding side load area door if possible and get the load area ply-lined before you carry cargo advises auction house BCA. That way you should add £200 to £300 to your vehicle’s value when you come to sell it.

By contrast, an otherwise clean van valued at £5,000 could easily lose up to £1,500 in value if its side panels are severely bashed and battered as a consequence of inside-out damage.

A single nearside door is probably the minimum buyers expect these days, BCA advises, while a van destined for city centre delivery work would benefit from twin side-loading doors. Potential value in the used market can increase by around £150 for a single and £250 for twin side-loading doors, depending on the vehicle.

“When combined with a bulkhead, air-conditioning will add more value to a well-presented high-specification van than it will to a more basic model and is worth between £100 and £200 depending on the vehicle,” says BCA’s UK business development manager, commercial vehicles, Duncan Ward. “On a late-year low-mileage van this difference could easily widen to as much as £400 to £500.”

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