Richard, welcome to the forum.

Its hard to advise without knowing how much you already know about cars and MINIs in particular but here goes!

Although its quite new, has it had an annual oil change? Despite the low mileage, if its never had a change, that is a minus point.

Options generally depreciate much more quickly than the price of the base car. So only factor those that are important to you into your assessment of the car.

As for depreciation its worth looking in Autotrader and similar sites to see what prices are being asked for MINIs of this spec at the future age and mileage you expect to sell. So if you exect to sell this 2015 car in three years time, see what 2013/4 models are advertised at now. Actual prices will of course be lower.

As to actual real depreciation in future, who knows? If the £ continues to fall, depreciation might be lower. Or if the economy goes belly up the car market might crash. All that you can say is that MINIs historically are low depreciators.

Edited by catsdad on 12/01/2017 at 21:02

Any basic car loaded with expensive options is normally a BAD buy when new, and not a good investment either buying or leasing.

Leasing companies have various formulae to determine the GMFV of the car in 3 years, say. The fancy calcualtion takes their buy price, adds money on for interest, adds their profit % & then the crystal ball figure of the car value in 3 years time is subtracted.

Say it is £200 per month over 3 years. The options ££value added are divided by 36 and added to the monthly figure i.e. there is very little OR no value in the options - in their view it might make the car easier to sell & probably worth some extra to them BUT it is the Basic car value that determines the GMFV!

Premium Brand saloon cars, top of the range sports cars will have options that add value - Leather seats on a MB, autobox on a sports car, but say a premium exhaust costing £3000 on a BMW M3 could either be a +/- addition.

I plugged this spec into carfile.net and it costs NEW £16900 now. Other brokers carwow etc are even cheaper, 2 years ago, in Feb (good time for discounts) the price you could haggle would have been less. It could jave been a stock or demonstrator in whoch case the price may have been £1000 cheaper.

Options add almost nothing to used car values in this price range.

The car almost certainly will have not yet been serviced. 2 year servicing from my experience and disvussed at length elsewjhere on this forum is a timebomb for fiture owners. Take a look at HJs car reviews whats good/bad.

In short, your friend is screwing you for top dollar.

Edited by brum on 13/01/2017 at 14:01

Why is it that theres never enough time to edit a post??

I was just going to remove my overly harsh last sentence, about friend screwing for top dollar, but was blocked by an over eager Avant!

Edited by brum on 13/01/2017 at 14:10

Glass's guide or Parkers. The prices given are decided by professionals (their job) and a price is simply what someone (anyone) is willing to pay. Any single professional can be wrong - met a few of them.