I'm privately selling them Mazda 5. I figure it only needs rear brakes to pass a safety.
I presume it's way easier to sell a car that is safetied?
But what's the cutoff? Say I need to put $500 into it. Or $1000.
What's a good threshold for just selling as is? Based on Kijiji the upper limit is $5k.
I'm also thinking of having the mechanic sort out what's wrong and then see what the buyer wants to do. That could range from me dropping it off at their place to them being a pain in the ass about any repairs. Not sure the risk of the latter is worth the former.
I sold the Corolla via autotrader. I consider myself lucky that I found a fresh-out-of University student who just wanted reliable, simple, clean transportation. The transaction was easy.
Every responder to my ad wanted it safety tested. I didn't list it as "as is", but I suspect offers would be lower if you do. You can find mechanics on kijiji who will do a safety test for about $75-80. I would call 'em up and see what you can do - they'll often not try to overblow what repairs are necessary, if any, in order to pass the safety test. Dealerships and/or CT on the other hand, I read that they want the business to do the repairs and jack up what's necessary. I can't verify the latter, but it seems like reasonable advice.
That all said, I HIGHLY recommend that you get the safety cert done yourself. For one thing, you're not getting hosed by the mechanic the buyer wants you to go to. For another, and this is the far more important, the car is legally registered to YOU until the buyer changes that over. The changeover can't happen until the safety certificate is done. If you sell it as-is, and the buyer can't get the safety done (or the cost to do so is prohibitive, so they try to resell it), you may find yourself legally on the hook if there's any accident or other incident involving the car.
For $80ish, I say safety the car.