Anonymous wrote:Just because you only have $17k to spend doesn’t magically make a $19k car worth $16k plus fees. If they own it for more, they can’t sell it just because you don’t have enough.

They absolutely will. They will make up the difference elsewhere—overselling to someone who doesn’t know what they are doing, giving someone too little for a trade in, etc. They want to sell CARS to make a quota. They make up their loss with big bonuses from the manufacturer based on the CARS they sell, not what they sell them for.

We have a family friend in the car dealer business, and I can tell you, as someone else said, they want to sell you a car more than you want to buy one. No matter what it takes!

Just because you only have $17k to spend doesn’t magically make a $19k car worth $16k plus fees. If they own it for more, they can’t sell it just because you don’t have enough.

OP here, are there other sites better than cars.com to locate vehicles?

The complication here is OP is looking as a user Acura with 22k miles. The prices will vary widely, and there are not exactly the same cars on sale elsewhere to compare or use as leverage.

Dealers tend to have more room on used cars though -- they probably got it on a trade-in, so tey can shift some of the profit they made on selling the new car that was part of that trade over to getting rid of the trade if they need to.

Anonymous wrote:Shouldn't you not say up front the highest you can pay? Start lower and then you have wiggle room.

+1.

Don't tell them you want a 17k car! Then they'll find a 16k car and sell it to you for 17. YOU research the car you can afford using truecar or costco or whatever and then you negotiate with the car dealer over email.

DH brought a 42k car down to 34,400, and all over email.