The cars I looked at pre Covid are $8-10k more now

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH sold his older car just before the pandemic and was in the market for a new car. Unfortunately, he is facing the same issue. We need 3 cars in our household. We now have 2 cars. Our solution is to wait it out and come with creative solutions. No way are we paying thousand of dollars extra for a car. Carpool, flex schedule etc are our creative solutions for the time being.

Sounds like you don’t really need 3 cars then!

[Anonymous]

I just bought a Rav4 hybrid. It was difficult to find and had been on the lot for one day. I live in a very large metro area and several of the suburban dealers of this type of car told us that they would only sell to people from the city itself if they showed up in person and bought it on site -- they wouldn't reserve or add non-locals to the wait list.

We did pay MSRP. Not more, but we got lucky and found one that *was* MSRP without dealer add ons.

I made the decision because I just didn't want to put more money into our old second car, I found an out-of-dealer buyer for it easily and made way more money on it than I would have a few years ago. My other car (not the one I sold, a newer car) is actually selling for *more* on the open market than I bought it used a year and a half ago (since when do cars accrue value?!)

Anyway, we made the decision knowing that it wasn't necessarily the best financial decision, but the more I make major financial decisions the more I recognize that purchases are for using, and we just figured that the benefit a new car would provide us was worth the costs for getting it now.

Tl,dr wait if you can, but I don't think the situation's getting better any time soon and there are still occasionally cars to be found. And if you have a trade in DO NOT TRADE IT IN. There are many eager buyers of used cars out there right now and you can easily sell for twice what the dealer will give you.

[Anonymous]

I was in an auto collision a few mos. back & my car was declared a total loss by my insurance co. so unfortunately I had no choice but to purchase another car.

Fortunately auto insurance companies are aware of the chaotic used car market so their settlement checks are also higher.

I got a great settlement for my crashed vehicle.
More than what I had originally paid for it five yrs. prior. 👏🏽

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would do anything possible to avoid buying a car in the next 6 to 12 months.

Understandable that some have no choice (e.g. engine failure or car totaled in accident), but many could stretch their old car along for another year and put off buying.

Many buying now will end up upside down with negative equity for several years. Especially those who paid markup above MSRP...yeah Janice in 2 years your loan on that Telluride you paid $5k over sticker for is going to be way underwater.

If I had to jump into the pool righ now I would either do a 2 year lease of a low cost car, or use one of the lease swapping websites to take over someone else's lease with a year or so remaining on it. Use that to ride out the market craziness.

OP here. Yeah this is where we landed. Our car needs probably $500-1000 of maintenance/wear items that we were going to skip if we traded in, but we will just do them and kick the fan down the road. Nothing wrong with the car otherwise.

Yea - I just spent $1200 on a car repair for a 9y old car that is probably only worth $5000 because I am not willing to pay 30% more for a used car right now. I figured that $1200 was only about 3 months of a car payment.

[Anonymous]

This thread makes me grateful that my 2013 with 102K miles is still running beautifully.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH sold his older car just before the pandemic and was in the market for a new car. Unfortunately, he is facing the same issue. We need 3 cars in our household. We now have 2 cars. Our solution is to wait it out and come with creative solutions. No way are we paying thousand of dollars extra for a car. Carpool, flex schedule etc are our creative solutions for the time being.

Sounds like you don’t really need 3 cars then!

+1 It's a pandemic and people aren't going out as much and you can always ride share or use public transport in a pinch.