Where should you meet someone to sell a car?

Use a safe exchange zone

Search your town plus safe exchange zone.

Plenty of police departments and sheriff’s offices keep a marked, camera-covered bay in their own parking lot for private sales. Usually free. Usually open any hour. Usually no appointment.

They exist because private sales go wrong in predictable ways, and the department would rather it happened on camera. Check whether one is near you before you arrange anything.

Think twice about your driveway

Your address, plus something worth money, plus a time somebody knows you will be there. Worth thinking about once.

Meet in a busy, well-lit parking lot in daylight instead. A grocery store or a shopping center.

Treat the first meeting as a viewing, not a closing.

Bring somebody. Tell somebody.

• Take another person with you. It changes a negotiation as much as it changes anything else.
• Tell somebody who is not going where you will be and when you expect to be back.
• Daylight, and a place you picked — not one you were talked into.

The test drive is its own thing

See the license before anybody gets in. Photograph it, or write the details down.

Ride along. Ask about their insurance, and know your own position before the first appointment.

Write down who drove it and when. That is the part people skip, and it is the part that answers a ticket or a camera notice weeks later.

Money and place are one decision

A bank branch during opening hours answers both at once. The payment gets checked where it can be checked, and you are somewhere staffed and covered by cameras.

Cashier’s checks and bank drafts get forged often enough to verify at the issuing bank — not by looking at them. Do it while the vehicle is still yours.

The sheets for the meeting

The test drive log records who drove it and when, and the call log has the six questions worth asking before anybody comes to see it. Free, no account.