BuyCarLeh

About

Hi — I'm the person behind BuyCarLeh. Upfront: I'm not an industry insider, and I've got no secret data. I'm just someone who got tired of feeling outgunned every time I looked at a used car, and decided to do the homework in the open.

Buying used in Singapore can feel rigged. The dealer across the table knows what cars actually sell for, how long one's been sitting, what your trade-in is really worth. You know almost none of it. I can't get you the dealer's private numbers — nobody outside the trade can. What I've tried to build is the next best thing: an honest-as-I-can-make-it read on what a car's worth, from the things that are knowable.

A few things I can pin down exactly — road tax, the OMV cost stack, COE category and months left, PARF rebates, registration fees — because they're just LTA's own formulas. When a figure is built only from those, it's exact, and I flag which ones are.

Most things I can only estimate — fair-price ranges, depreciation, the scorecards. Drawn from comparable cars; estimates, not appraisals. I try to caveat each one honestly so you can decide how much weight it deserves, rather than taking my headline on faith.

A few calls are just my opinion — like whether a generation has known weak points. I keep a hand-curated record and boil each into a plain read: no known faults, check before buying, or tread carefully. I lean cautious on purpose, and I label it as judgment, not fact — because that's what it is.

There's a lot I can't see. Singapore doesn't publish what cars actually sold for, so the prices here are only what sellers are asking. Turning that into “what you might reasonably pay” is the hard part, and I won't pretend I always get it right.

What I try not to overreach on — predicting next month's COE (nobody can), appraising your specific car, or replacing a workshop. Do your sums here; let a mechanic inspect the actual metal. A reliability band only tells you what a generation tends to do, never what's wrong with the car in front of you.

The one thing I hold myself to — a wrong number is worse than a missing one. If I can't work something out honestly, I'd rather leave it blank and say why than guess. And I do get things wrong — when you catch one, please tell me. I'd much rather fix it than defend it.

Where the numbers come from — everything's built on public and official information: LTA's published tax and registration rules, government open data (including COE results from data.gov.sg under the Singapore Open Data Licence), and the prices sellers openly advertise. None of that is mine — all I've added is the patient work of structuring it and doing the math.

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