I’m about to pull the trigger on a nice LJ rubicon. Has been inspected by a mechanic I trust. Approximately 90k miles, Super clean, bone stock, clean title and not a spec of rust anywhere. I’m in NC. Asking price is $21,000. This is well above KBB but with Covid and the used car market so hot I don’t know if this is a fair price. Thoughts?
The price is a little steep but I think there is much value in (1) bone stock-ism, (2) being 100% rust-free (if it's true), and (3) in it being local to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, one can fly somewhere and drive a Jeep home, but what if the Jeep sucks and you don't want it? Take than money spent (wasted) on the trip out of your Jeep fund. What if you do buy it? Now you can tack the flight, your gas, your time, fast food, and motel bill(s) onto the price of that Jeep.
It also depends upon what you want to do with the Jeep. If you want to seriously mod and wheel the Jeep, it's probably better to start with "just" an LJ, not the Rubicon. If you don't want to go crazy off road and with the mods, than I'd do the LJR. Having the hardtop already adds value to this one as well. But as others noted, if you wait a bit, the time after Thanksgiving and before the end of March is the best time to be a buyer. That being said, in the search for my LJs, I found that a handful of the local rigs that I thought were way too expensive ended up selling fairly quickly.
Depending upon who the seller is and the situation, AND how much you actually want this specific Jeep, I might consider offering $17K and seeing what happens. It would be nice to get it for less, but I probably wouldn't sell it for that price if it were mine and as described/expected.