Hey fellas, I am looking at Autotrader.com for used certify cars and was wondering about how much am i usually able to knock off the internet price. I have heard some ppl said autotrader pricing is pretty low already. For example only, I am looking at 2008 certified acura TL 33K miles for $23,991. How much am I able to knock off autotrader pricing with neogiation? 2008 certified acura TL 28K miles for $23,494 REDUCED! Does REDUCED!! mean the car has been on the lot for over 2 months and they need to get rid of it? Whenever I see REDUCED, how much more can I neogiate down compared to a regular posting? Thanks for all the great tips.....
You can always get a better price on cars than the initial posted price (the cars you're looking at anyway). I get right to the point when I negotiate with car salesman: I go in there, tell them to show me the car, take a look to make sure nothing's wrong, then I make them my best offer. If they take it we'll go have a test drive and get it checked out by a mechanic, if they don't I walk off the lot and go to the next one on the list. It's a detached and efficient process.
Go in and low ball them. Play the "this is all i can afford, or my budget can not go higher than X" But stay low, stand your ground and work in increments. Be like you know, let me sleep on it, or I will think about it and walk away. The last thing a salesman wants you to do is leave if he can sense a pending sale. NEVER, and I repeat NEVER settle on a payment price. Always settle what you can afford up front and not X payments per month. Sales men feed on this and take advantage of people. Yeah your payment may be $200 a month which can make a high price seem lower than it is. I just recently purchased a Escape for my wife, and the asking price was 15,995. I let him know my budget is around 10k-12k depending on value/price etc... I played my cards right, and talked him down to 11,300 take home (TTL included) I say, you can easily take home that TL for about 19.5-21.5k if they need the sale and if you play your cards right. Remember, they need to sell you the car to move inventory. A car that has sat for a long time costs them money. Faster it goes, the faster they can bring in another one. But some places are tight. The money is in the used car market, not new.
www.nadaguides.com www.kbb.com It all depends. Most cases I'd imagine you can knock some prices off. When I got my car, the listed price was already below both sites' trade-in prices, which doesn't happen too often (I was looking at Autotrader, Cars.com, Carmax, Ebay Motors, and local listings for a good 3-4 months and was following the prices pretty closely). When I tried to negotiate the price, the guy was firm, told me what the car's worth, and didn't budge one bit. I happily bought the car anyway.
Check out acurazine.com and go to the 3rd gen TL forums. You may want to ask about pricing there. BTW, unless you're unlucky, it's a damn reliable car. http://tl.acurazine.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=93