Buying a New Car: Tips from a Novice

If you are friends with the hus on FB, you likely already know that the poor ‘ole Jett got the boot. We were planning on waiting another month before taking the plunge, but mr. car-dealer called Michael on Friday and told him it was the day and they were ready to make a deal to meet quota for the month. Even so, we didn’t think we’d buy one. But boy did they make us a deal.

Out with the old..






Seeing as this was my first car buying experience, I consulted my favorite reference for advice, google. I scanned lots of articles and now am pretty much a pro. Here’s a post by another blogger that I found pretty helpful. In case car buying is anywhere in your future, here are some tips I found to be most helpful:

• Buy at the end of the month. Dealerships have quotas to make and are more willing to make a deal.
• Take a book or computer. This is one thing I did not do and greatly regretted it. The whole process takes forever and I was bored out of my mind, especially after my phone died.
• If you’re trading in a car, you’ll need your title (you can always bring it later if you forget).
• Don’t buy on your first visit, no matter how tempted you are.
• When test driving, don’t seem overly excited. Act like the car is so-so even if you’re head over heels.
• Talk to numerous dealers. When we were sitting at the haggle table at dealership #2, Michael actually called dealership #1 to see if he would go any lower. This caused dealership #2 to drop the price by 3k almost instantly. I had numerous on stand-by via email as well.
• Be friendly, but you must haggle. If you’re not a haggler, practice. If you really suck, get a haggler to go with you (Michael can be rented for haggling by the hour if needed).
• Talk financing at the end. Dealerships make a good amount off of loans so they may make less of a deal if you aren’t financing through them.
• If doing a trade-in, know the rough value of your old car so you know whether or not to challenge their offer for it.
• I contacted several out of town dealerships over the phone. I found they won’t drop prices any over the phone (they say you have to come in for that), but you can get a sense of initial offers for each dealership. This helped us narrow down were to go. One even emailed me later and said he’d at least match whatever offer we got. In my opinion, it never hurts to ask.
• Decide if you are set on a specific color and model. Though I had preferences, I wasn’t dead set on any one and so was okay with buying what one they had on the lot. If you buy from the lot inventory, you’ll be more likely to get a deal.
• Tell the car dealer you need a minute if you want to talk about his counter-offer in private. Our guy just wanted to hang-out. Kinda like a mosquito. But when we told him we needed a minute, he flew away.
  

Before you go, do your research:

• What kind of interest rates can you get from the bank? We found our bank didn’t offer anything much better than the car dealership. For some cars, you can actually get a 0% rate if you put a large chunk down (not so for the Prius V).
• Find all the prices for the car (invoice, MSRP, average market value, etc). Be prepared to discuss these with the car salesman so he knows you’ve done your research. Here's a good website for all those values.
  

Other tips I read, but didn’t stick by:

• If trading in a car, don’t negotiate this portion until the end. First decide on a number for the new car, then discuss trade-in deductions. This one was hard for me to follow. We just did it all together. We did have an estimate for trade-in from dealer #1 though that was quite a bit higher, which we used against dealer #2.
• Don’t tell the dealer what other places have quoted you for the new car. We didn’t know how to avoid this, but telling them the price actually seemed to work in our favor as they immediately matched and then dropped some.