If you’ve done any shopping with online car auctions, you may be well aware of the issues that come with buying cars online. For one thing, you pretty much have to buy the car on faith that the seller is telling you the truth about it. And let’s face it: people on the internet can sometimes be untrustworthy.

But with repossessed cars for sale online, the story is a little bit different. In many cases, these are cars whose owners simply couldn’t keep them for financial reasons. Thus, often they’re still in great condition and may even have very low mileage.

Plus, the other advantage is that the sellers aren’t necessarily seeking a profit. Often, they’re local governments or law enforcement agencies that are just looking to unload the vehicles. And for you and other buyers, this means low prices.

In general, cars bought through online car auctions are cheaper than the ones you can get from a car dealer’s lot, but the disadvantages of buying cars online tend to balance out the cost advantages. Sometimes, it’s doubtful whether buying online is a good thing at all. But when it comes to repossessed cars online, the extra low prices put the equation squarely in favor of buying online.

What this means for you is that participating in online car auctions for repossessed cars for sale is that you can usually get cars at below the market rate. If you play your cards right, you can end up with a really nice car that you can potentially sell for hundreds or even thousands more than what you bought it for.

I’m not saying that you should go online and buy all the repossessed cars for sale that you can find. Sure, if you wanted to try to turn this into a business, you could do it. But in most cases, it’s probably not worth all the time and effort it requires to work with online car auctions. And then there are other complications—for example, a certain percentage of the cars for sale online are going to have problems that the seller either doesn’t know about or doesn’t care to share. So all in all, this probably isn’t the best business to get into.

But if you’re just looking for a car for yourself, repossessed cars may be just what you need. Just remember that what you see is what you get, which can be either good or bad.