Can I negotiate a part-exchange price?

Yes — part-exchange valuations are generally negotiable, and dealers often build some room into their initial offer expecting a bit of back-and-forth.

How to give yourself leverage:

• Get valuations from multiple dealers first — having a couple of comparable offers in hand gives you a real benchmark, and dealers are often willing to match or beat a competing offer rather than lose the sale entirely
• Know your car's private sale value too — even if you don't intend to sell privately, knowing that figure gives you a realistic sense of how much room there might be to push the part-exchange offer up
• Time it around the new car negotiation — some buyers find it useful to agree the price of the new car first, separately from the part-exchange value, since bundling both negotiations together can make it harder to see exactly how much you're getting for your old car

A tactic worth knowing: some buyers choose not to mention they have a part-exchange car until after the price of the new car itself has been negotiated down, on the basis that revealing it earlier can sometimes give the dealer more room to adjust figures across the deal in their own favour. Whether or not you use this approach is a personal call, but it's a common enough tactic that it's worth being aware of either way — as both a buyer and if you're wondering why a deal came together the way it did.

Ultimately, treating the part-exchange value as a genuine negotiation, rather than a fixed number to simply accept, tends to get better results than taking the first figure offered.