Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

One of our readers Daniel sent in an email a while back (actually 6 months ago sorry Daniel) about a detailed post he had written about how to Use Excel to find the Best Used Car Deals.

I wont repeat the whole article, but get you to go over to his site, read it and try it out and comment on how you found it to work for you. I will post a couple of snippets here for you as teasers.

A used car can have any combination year and mileage. Both of these factors contribute to depreciation and make it very difficult to price-compare cars. Should you buy a 2011 model with 10,000 miles, a 2005 with 50,000 or a 2007 with 15,000 on the odometer? This guide shows you how to use Excel to find the “sweet spot” in the used car market for any given model, where depreciation and mileage come together to give you the best deal.

You’ll learn how to quickly scrape data from hundreds of used car listings on the Web, plot it in Excel and discover which model years are the best deal for a given mileage count. Instead of comparing between a handful of models, you’ll be able to see the whole market on your computer screen. This strategy also reveals which cars are the most overpriced and exposes information about how dealers price cars. This project will take an hour or two to complete, but save you thousands of dollars on a used car purchase.

Read the rest of his very detailed article with links, screenshots, a sample spreadsheet to download and try it yourself. Thanks Daniel.