Anonymous wrote:instead of haggling on the total price of the car, tell them what you want your payment to be. If they can do it, great, if they can't then walk away. We have done this both times we bought our cars (husband literally took the keyboard and punched in his own numbers) and it worked perfectly.

If you take away anything from this discussion please do not do this. This is absolutely the worst way to buy a car, new or used. Negotiate on the price of the car, line up financing before you go to the dealership and only use their financing if it's better than what you have.

Anonymous wrote:instead of haggling on the total price of the car, tell them what you want your payment to be. If they can do it, great, if they can't then walk away. We have done this both times we bought our cars (husband literally took the keyboard and punched in his own numbers) and it worked perfectly.

That's idiotic

instead of haggling on the total price of the car, tell them what you want your payment to be. If they can do it, great, if they can't then walk away. We have done this both times we bought our cars (husband literally took the keyboard and punched in his own numbers) and it worked perfectly.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate haggling for the sake of haggling. If you think it's not priced fairly make an offer you are comfortable with.

Have you ever seen a car that's fairly priced at a dealer (and by fairly priced I mean a price that lets the dealer make a modest profit, say 3-5%) because I haven't.

I bought at a no-haggle dealer and they had great prices-- they were actually surprised I was local because people come from all over to buy there. Not sure what their profit margin was-- think they probably make their $ on volume plus post-sale service.

Anonymous wrote:So I'm OK with haggling as long as I know I have decent solid footing, but my problem is that I don't know what "solid footing" means for car prices. Is 10% below asking price realistic? 20%? We're looking at the $15-20k range, so for example, would offering 18k on a 20k car be realistic, too much off, or not enough off?


TIA

Go to edmunds, and get a bunch of dealers to give you internet quotes. I went to a dealer, and the initial price they offered me was over 2k more than the lowest internet quote on a 24k car. They matched the price immediately when I showed them the other quote. The "haggling" took 5 minutes.

i bought a car from a nissan dealership last year. used (but not too old), and after like 2-3 hours of haggling they would not come down off the price. the guy told me that the internet has changed things such that haggling, in large part, is a thing of the past. the same day, i did buy my wife a car (in addition to the nissan), and they came down on that just a little bit because it wasn't a nissan and had been sitting for about a month.

YMMV

I use Kelly's Blue Book web site to find out the average sale price of used cars.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate haggling for the sake of haggling. If you think it's not priced fairly make an offer you are comfortable with.

Have you ever seen a car that's fairly priced at a dealer (and by fairly priced I mean a price that lets the dealer make a modest profit, say 3-5%) because I haven't.

If you really hate haggling, use one of the car buying services (like carbargains.org), and for a flat fee they'll negotiate down a deal. You'll do much better than paying without any haggling.

Anonymous wrote:I hate haggling for the sake of haggling. If you think it's not priced fairly make an offer you are comfortable with.

Have you ever seen a car that's fairly priced at a dealer (and by fairly priced I mean a price that lets the dealer make a modest profit, say 3-5%) because I haven't.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I'm OK with haggling as long as I know I have decent solid footing, but my problem is that I don't know what "solid footing" means for car prices. Is 10% below asking price realistic? 20%? We're looking at the $15-20k range, so for example, would offering 18k on a 20k car be realistic, too much off, or not enough off?


TIA

Impossible to answer without more information. New or used? If used, from dealer or private sale? What make and model?

OP here - sorry - didn't think it actually made a difference! Used car, either a Honda Odyssey or a Toyota Sienna, through a dealer. Will give preference to lower mileage versus newer model year. Other than that I'm not terribly picky.

The reason it matters is because some cars are more in demand than others. You'll generally be able to negotiate more off the price of a Ford than the price of a Honda, for example. A better source than truecars.com is to look at completed auctions in Ebay autos for the car you're looking for and see what people actually pay. Edmunds car forums are another place for information as is craigslist and auto trader just to get a feel for the market for the car you want, both in terms of pricing and availability. Remember that dealers make a ton of money off used cars because they screw people on trade ins so there's a lot more room to negotiate on used cars vs. new cars. Don't buy any of the extra stuff they offer you, it's either unnecessary or overpriced. Be aware of various other fees they may try to tack on (documenation fees, ad fees, etc.) as most of them are pure profit for the dealer.

I hate haggling for the sake of haggling. If you think it's not priced fairly make an offer you are comfortable with.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I'm OK with haggling as long as I know I have decent solid footing, but my problem is that I don't know what "solid footing" means for car prices. Is 10% below asking price realistic? 20%? We're looking at the $15-20k range, so for example, would offering 18k on a 20k car be realistic, too much off, or not enough off?


TIA

Impossible to answer without more information. New or used? If used, from dealer or private sale? What make and model?

OP here - sorry - didn't think it actually made a difference! Used car, either a Honda Odyssey or a Toyota Sienna, through a dealer. Will give preference to lower mileage versus newer model year. Other than that I'm not terribly picky.

truecar dot com

Anonymous wrote:So I'm OK with haggling as long as I know I have decent solid footing, but my problem is that I don't know what "solid footing" means for car prices. Is 10% below asking price realistic? 20%? We're looking at the $15-20k range, so for example, would offering 18k on a 20k car be realistic, too much off, or not enough off?


TIA

Impossible to answer without more information. New or used? If used, from dealer or private sale? What make and model?

So I'm OK with haggling as long as I know I have decent solid footing, but my problem is that I don't know what "solid footing" means for car prices. Is 10% below asking price realistic? 20%? We're looking at the $15-20k range, so for example, would offering 18k on a 20k car be realistic, too much off, or not enough off?


TIA