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Oh poo poo, financing is this annoying too? I thought you could get sub 1% rates for new cars. Will they just let me put it on a credit card or something so I can churn points? Man sometimes I think I'm doing fine and sometimes I think I just have no relevant life experience. Edit: there's got to be some guide out there for this right? The complete idiot's guide to how to buy a car with minimal pain and zero negotiation? And not have to shop rates from 5 places? Amara fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Jul 19, 2018 |
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Jul 19, 2018 04:16
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Amara posted:Oh poo poo, financing is this annoying too? I thought you could get sub 1% rates for new cars. Will they just let me put it on a credit card or something so I can churn points? What credit history do you have? Do you know your Equifax score? Good rates require good credit. My son just bought a car ( a 2016 Mazda 3 for 10k). He's 28 with mediocre credit (645). He qualified for 5.9%, which is a bit high but doable and reasonable for his history. If your credit score is about 750 or higher, dealers will be falling all over themselves to give you Go to a bank or credit union and pre-qualify for a loan if you want some competition. HOW TO BUY A USED CAR (from a dealer): 1) Set your budget. How much money can you afford to spend? How much can you put down, how much can you finance? A rule of thumb is that your monthly payment will be about $100 for every $5000 you borrow. Negotiate with yourself between how much you can put down and how much you can afford per month to find a number you're comfortable with. This sets the dollar value of the car you buy, which is the fundamental constraint on any decision. 2) Do your homework. The first part of this is defining your needs, your wants, your tolerates and your ughs. Needs are what the car has to have to do it's primary duty. Wants are extra features you'd like to have but can live without if push comes to shove. Tolerates are things you don't like but can live with if necessary. Ughs are turnoffs that you absolutely do not want no matter what. Once you've done that, start researching cars that fit your price and criteria. Cars.com and CarGurus are two that let you set all sorts of parameters to filter your search. Get a mix of old and new, to see what that trade-off will be. An older, nicer car will have lots of cool features, but again it's old and is going to have more maintenance problems. A newer car will have fewer problems, but also fewer features at that price. Cast a fairly wide net, throw in some oddballs that hit most of your checkpoints just to keep your minds out of a rut. From there, you start reading reviews of the cars you've selected. Note how they ride, how they drive, their cargo utility, etc. Reviewers aren't you, so you have to learn to translate what the reviewer says to how you would respond to the same issue. Something that Car and Driver tears to pieces may not strike you as a particularly important issue at all. Through the reviews, narrow your list to about 4 or 5 cars that would be worth driving to confirm your opinions about them 3) Now go out and test drive your possibilities. Drop by a car lot, they'll be glad to let you take them for a spin. Some of the cars will impress you with how much better they are than you thought they'd be, others will be much worse. Zero in on the make, model, year, and trim level you want, with one alternate. The ones you drive don't have to be the exact model/trim/year you're thinking of, just one close enough to get a feel for what it would be like to own and drive the car for your own. 4) Learn the market. Spend a week or two following the cars you like so you can see about what they go for and the condition they're in. Read the Carfax about them to get a feel for why they're priced where they are. Once you know what an average price for your car should be, you will know what a bargain looks like. 5) Spend some time scanning the inventory lists and wait for a bargain. When you see THE CAR, go after it like an Orca after a Sealion. Dealers often have non-negotiable specials on cars as loss-leaders, just to generate traffic on the lot. When you see one involving the car you want, make it clear that you're not there to generate traffic, you're not interested in another car, you want THAT ONE RIGHT THERE, RIGHT NOW. Be ready to give them a deposit to hold it while you work through the financing. This can be a nerve-wracking time and an honest salesman makes all the difference. You're not there to generate traffic, they're not going to be able to distract you to a more expensive car, you're there to buy that car at that advertised price and that's it. Good ones will honor your priority and work with you. lovely ones will try to sell it out from under you to someone else for more money. You're at their mercy, and if you get burned just go back to waiting. Don't settle for something less just because it's on his lot. Test drive the car, look it over thoroughly, and run some tests to make sure it's a sound car. These vary based on the type of car and how much trust you have in the seller. 6) Sign a bunch of paperwork. When you get the paperwork, go through it to make sure it's the quoted price. If you brought your own financing, present it to them. If they have their own, make sure it's a fair rate commensurate with your credit rating. Make sure there are no vehicle prep fees or extended warranties or other bullshit. There's always "documentation fee" which is bullshit, but seems to be a source of built-in profit that I've never gotten them to budge on, so hold your nose on that one. You'll sign a bunch of papers, including an application for Title and Registration. You'll get a temporary tag (generally good for 45 days) while your papers are processed. Your permanent tags will arrive in the mail. 7) Final meeting with the salesman, he hands you the keys, and you drive home in your shiny new (used) car! I'm sure others have their own comments/criticisms to add, but this is a really solid method that I have just finished working through. My son got a 2016 Mazda 3 with 45k miles for $10000 just yesterday. This is the exact process we followed. Deteriorata fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Jul 19, 2018 |
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Jul 19, 2018 04:58
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Deteriorata posted:
Stopped reading your post after this statement, because once again your posting incorrect bullshit. Like is it your hobby to poo poo up this thread with incorrect information?
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Jul 19, 2018 05:20
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skipdogg posted:Stopped reading your post after this statement, because once again your posting incorrect bullshit. I'd add in that stuff that used to be pretty helpful (Out The Door pricing, emailing multiple dealers) has gotten less and less applicable. The other is that The Financing Guy part of signing everything will likely be the worst part, because you're sitting 4 feet away from a guy in an office and telling him "No I Don't Want That" to a litany of services, add-ons and whatnot. And if you haven't secured financing prior to all that, he'll be the one telling you the terms of the deal.
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Jul 19, 2018 08:11
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Deteriorata posted:What credit history do you have? Do you know your Equifax score? Welp, never had to think about credit score before, BFC told me to ignore it... until I had to buy a car or house. How accurate is the one mint pops up? Also, is there something I need to watch out for that prevents me from paying the car off early? I vaguely remember that that can be a thing.
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Jul 19, 2018 11:53
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Deteriorata posted:If your credit score is about 750 or higher, dealers will be falling all over themselves to give you 0% financing deals. dude if you think used car rates go down to zero i have some land for sale
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Jul 19, 2018 13:22
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Amara posted:Welp, never had to think about credit score before, BFC told me to ignore it... until I had to buy a car or house. How accurate is the one mint pops up? It's really unlikely and I think CFPB made prepayment penalties very well documented, but you want to look for text on an early payoff penalty. it's unlikely if you are going through a reputable finance joint but more likely if you are at a buy-here-pay-here type place I can't really advise you putting a car on a credit card unless you have the money to immediately pay it off since credit card interest rates are absurd compared to auto loan rates. Your Mint score should be within a range of accurate but if you really want more detail creditkarma is free and provides another picture
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Jul 19, 2018 13:25
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:dude if you think used car rates go down to zero i have some land for sale You're right. I was writing too fast and got to thinking about new cars we'd bought. I will correct it.
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Jul 19, 2018 14:17
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Amara posted:Welp, never had to think about credit score before, BFC told me to ignore it... until I had to buy a car or house. How accurate is the one mint pops up? Few loans these days have prepayment penalties. You can pay as much as you want over the minimum at any time. Houses and cars are expensive enough that a couple points on the interest rate makes a big difference in the total you'll pay. Shop around with banks and credit unions and see what you can get approved for. Dealers make a lot of money off finance charges, so they will often match those rates or better them to get your business. The primary thing is to go to the dealership knowing the car you want and the price you'll pay for it - and be willing to walk away if they can't deliver. If you leave it up to the salesman you'll end up paying too much for a car you may not like and be stuck with it. It's a lot of money and a long-term commitment, so doing your homework is mandatory. Also, be willing to travel to get the car, if necessary. We bought my son's car 120 miles away in another state. It was worth it for the savings.
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Jul 19, 2018 14:56
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Your local credit union will be the best bet to get the lowest rate with the least amount of bullshit.
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Jul 19, 2018 15:48
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Deteriorata posted:You're right. I was writing too fast and got to thinking about new cars we'd bought. I will correct it. 0% (or 0.9%, or any rate below current market) rates are driven by the manufacturer, not the dealer. The manufacturer is subsidizing the car loan in order to make the sale. The dealer cannot offer below market rates by themselves. Special financing information is readily available on the internet - it's pretty easy to know ahead of time whether the car you want to buy will have available special financing. This financing may not be available on all models from a particular manufacturer, since it's usually targeted at a particular model or segment to boost their sales. Besides this, there are incentives that may be available (GM does this routinely), so that GM will lower the price of your vehicle in return for non-special financing (i.e the regular rate). In my case, GM dropped the price of my car $2000 (actually more, since I paid less sales tax because the price was lower) to get me on 5.8% financing, which I kept for the required 90 days, then refinanced into credit union 2.9% financing. I ended up paying a hundred or so dollars of extra interest over those three months, well worth it to get an out the door price $2165 lower. It's been my experience that the best way to go about this is to get pre-approved credit union financing at the best rate you can get, walk in with that as a fallback, and see what the dealer can do. In the above cases, the dealer gets a kickback from the manufacturer for any incentives, plus additional money for getting a buyer on manufacturer financing, so there's zero incentive from any good dealer to keep any deals from you.
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Jul 19, 2018 16:55
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Yes, the manufacturer subsidized rate is almost without exception in lieu of cash on the hood. Do the math and figure out which one is a better deal.
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Jul 19, 2018 18:59
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Yes, the manufacturer subsidized rate is almost without exception in lieu of cash on the hood. Do the math and figure out which one is a better deal. Sample size of one but in my case it came with $750 specifically for financing with Honda, *and* a 0.9% rate. No idea why but I sure as gently caress wasn't going to complain.
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Jul 19, 2018 19:11
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Yes, the manufacturer subsidized rate is almost without exception in lieu of cash on the hood. Do the math and figure out which one is a better deal. It's almost always a wash, outside of some model that they're trying to dump with large cash incentives. They're not going to let you get away with an actual deal.
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Jul 19, 2018 19:44
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Yes, the manufacturer subsidized rate is almost without exception in lieu of cash on the hood. Do the math and figure out which one is a better deal. My sample size is pretty small, but during my recent car buying experience nearly every place I went to had some sort of financing incentive that was separate from the actual car buying incentives. It sometimes took several questions to figure out which were attached to buying the car at all, and which were tied to financing it through them. I know some of the posters recently were stressing low-effort buying experiences, but that has the real potential of leaving several thousand dollars on the table.
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Jul 19, 2018 20:11
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there are manufacturer supported and dealer supported incentives. they are separate. usually there are several price incentives going on at the same time from both manufacturer and dealer. actual finance incentives are from the manufacturer (more accurately, the manufacturer's credit arm). in most cases not accepting the finance incentive is replaced by a manufacturer cash incentive. this is in addition to any other manufacturer or dealer purchase incentives. it's complicated and dealer F&I guys are fundamentally dishonest so they make it even more byzantine than it needs to be, to the point of potentially not telling you about available incentives for which you may qualify.
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Jul 19, 2018 20:28
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Is this also the right thread to ask about how to sell a car? It's not something I've ever done, and my friends and family are no help as they have either traded cars in to the dealer or sold to an acquaintance. I live in Detroit but I've accepted a job in Manhattan, and I'm not bringing my car with me. I made the unfortunate decision to purchase a brand new car 4 years ago, expecting to drive it for at least a decade. I have a 2015 Chrysler 200S AWD, which I have paid off in full. It currently has about 48,000 miles on it, purchased in June 2014. I've done all of the routine maintenance for it and haven't had any major mechanical or electrical issues. I have had some body work done for fender benders, nothing more than cosmetic damage and the repairs are close to unnoticeable. Other than Kelley Blue Book, is there a good way to assess value? How in the world do I go about selling this thing and ensuring that I get a fair price for it?
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Jul 19, 2018 20:39
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Carmax will inspect and give you an offer that's good for a week or so. Usually it's a lowball offer, but it sets a baseline for you on what to expect. In my personal experience, they offered me something like $2700 for a 15 year old Lexus RX300 with 175k miles. I ended up selling it on Craigslist a couple months after I got Carmax's offer for more than their offer, but Craigslist buyers are flaky and sometimes a nightmare to deal with.
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Jul 19, 2018 20:54
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Carmax's offers are going to be very lowball for anything older than 10 years cause I don't think they actually sell them themselves, while anything newer than that is probably a lot closer to normal. I've sold one car to them cause it was like $3k less than I paid new for the vehicle 3 years before, another I used their appraisal to get better trade in, and a third (that was 14 years old) they offerred $4k and I wound up selling it on Craigslist for $10k.
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Jul 19, 2018 22:13
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I brought a 10 year old VW Passat with 4mo and <100k miles on it to Carmax for an appraisal. And was offered $750 for it.
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Jul 20, 2018 13:27
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Hrm. Outside of Craigslist, is there a reliable way to sell to a third party, or am I better off taking what a dealership can give me? Car is only 4 years old, but it’s unfortunately a discontinued model.
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Jul 20, 2018 13:53
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Aggro posted:Hrm. Outside of Craigslist, is there a reliable way to sell to a third party, or am I better off taking what a dealership can give me? Car is only 4 years old, but it’s unfortunately a discontinued model. https://www.cars.com/sell/
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Jul 20, 2018 14:42
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Get it detailed, take some good pics, and post it. Get copies / photos of their drivers license before test drives. Meet at their bank and go to the window with them for them to draw a cashiers check. Sign title over. Maybe go a thousand less than what dealers are selling them for. Look at comparable cars for your market pricing. Think like a buyer and how yours would come up in the search. I've done this multiple times in Michigan. Works great.
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Jul 20, 2018 16:38
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Don't forget to include "interesting trades considered" in the ad.
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Jul 20, 2018 16:56
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Aggro posted:Hrm. Outside of Craigslist, is there a reliable way to sell to a third party, or am I better off taking what a dealership can give me? Car is only 4 years old, but it’s unfortunately a discontinued model. why does it matter that it's a discontinued model fca is still in business (for now lol)
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Jul 20, 2018 17:09
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For real even if carmax lowballs you it doesn't cost anything to get an estimate and if it is good it's by far the easiest way to sell a car.
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Jul 20, 2018 17:31
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Also shop trade ins at the dealership, never know when a dealer values the car more than another (and yourself). It may be worth $1k or whatever to drop it off and not deal with the detailing and process.
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Jul 20, 2018 17:45
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Dealers will always try to hose you on trade-ins. Even when they run the "We'll give you $3000 in trade for ANYTHING!" promotions, pretty much 100% of the time they'll either have some technicality on why your junker doesn't qualify, or insist on making back the $3000 and more on financing. Unless you're in a position where time is far more valuable than money to you and you don't give a poo poo how much you get for your outgoing car, you just want it gone, never sell a car to a dealer.
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Jul 20, 2018 18:13
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Right before the TDI scandal hit I was trying to offload a manual, 2 door, diesel Golf, fully loaded in shark blue. Naturally, this is a pretty niche car so it was on the market quite awhile. A local dealer was offering $500 on top of any Carmax offer so I took it to Carmax for an appraisal. They gave me a relatively decent offer, especially since I couldn’t sell the thing to save my life. That dealer was not happy on the $500 offer but they laid up.
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Jul 20, 2018 18:17
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dude you should have held on to that poo poo, the terms on buybacks were hilariously good
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Jul 20, 2018 18:21
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The scandal hadn’t broke just yet. I was about 2 months off. I did the math and it was definitely a lot nicer financially if I had been able to get in on it.
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Jul 20, 2018 18:29
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I have the option of getting a leaf that is cheaper, newer, and fewer miles than a Prius. Is there a good reason to buy the Prius instead?
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Jul 20, 2018 20:38
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N. Senada posted:I have the option of getting a leaf that is cheaper, newer, and fewer miles than a Prius. Is there a good reason to buy the Prius instead? That Leaf had better be way cheaper. They're not comparable cars. A Prius can easily be your only vehicle, suitable for road trips and whatever long days you might potentially have. You can't depend on a Leaf being able to drive more than ~55 miles in a day as the battery ages with the user running climate control. If you've either got a gas car around, or very rarely drive more than 50 miles in a day the Leaf would be a fine option.
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Jul 20, 2018 20:47
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Do you ever want to drive it out of town, or do you live in a hot or cold climate? Range on Leafs is pretty awful for some years and gets much worse in extreme temperatures, but as a secondary car to use around town they make sense.
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Jul 20, 2018 20:48
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With the impending death of Tesla it won't be surprising if the big manufacturers quickly kill their all-electric models in the near future
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Jul 20, 2018 21:36
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Eric the Mauve posted:With the impending death of Tesla it won't be surprising if the big manufacturers quickly kill their all-electric models in the near future this will not happen
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Jul 20, 2018 21:38
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Nearing purchasing a vehicle. Got (what I think?) is a good out-the-door price on a Mazda CX-5 Touring. Last things to decide: 1. CX-5 has good reviews elsewhere and I've heard others on here are pretty/fairly happy with it. True/False/Opinions? 2. Interior color. Choice of Beige or Black. Leatherette. Beige looks better/more stylish and is probably cooler (in the hot 100 degree heat). Black probably stays looking nicer longer, as I would guess that it is 100x easier to hide stains in case of spills/getting muddy/dirty/etc. Hoping to hold onto this car for 8 or 10+ years. Opinions on whether Beige is worth it? Just it just fade fast and not stay clean/nice looking due to wear/dirt/mud/rain/kids/etc?
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Jul 21, 2018 03:32
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I have never had issues with tan interiors. If it’s leather you just wipe it down every so often. If it’s cloth you shampoo it like once every five years. They don’t fade more than black. The CX-5 is a good car. You will be happy with it. I assume you have driven it against the other usual suspects, especially the CR-V?
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Jul 21, 2018 12:52
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logis posted:Nearing purchasing a vehicle. Got (what I think?) is a good out-the-door price on a Mazda CX-5 Touring. Last things to decide: Beige is worth about 15 degrees F over black in the summertime if your car sits in the sun more than about 90 minutes at a time. That also means less effort from your air conditioner.
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Jul 21, 2018 20:14
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I don't think beige ages very well but YMMV.
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Jul 22, 2018 00:48
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