The "Real" Price of a Car

Better yet.... save up the cash and pay for a car with cash. Because in realty you will be paying thousands more once the loan is all said and done if you finance it. Read the book The Total Money Make-over by Dave Ramsey. Totally changed my life.

Lisa

Tell them you will buy it from them if they are willing to sell it to you for X, and then be willing to walk away and look elsewhere. If they want to sell it to you for X, they will.

My husband, who works on a car lot, says that if they are willing to knock of 3,000 they will knock of at least another 2,000. Here's what he says you need to do....
1. Check car fax. Make sure that there are no accidents on the car.
2. Be willing to walk away if they are not willing to go down to your price.
3. Go to another Toyota dealership.
4. Go online, print out pictures and prices from other dealerships or private sales that are closer to what you want to pay. When you go back to deal with the salesman, name your price (close to what you have printed out). If they are not willing, you look at your copy and show it to them, say, "they are closer to what we want, are you willing to deal" and if they are not...go to that place.
5. Okay, I will go ahead and pay the "33,000 you are looking for, but I would like you to add on a DVD player for my kids..."or whatever else you would like to add to the car.
Good luck, buying a car is a big pain!
L.

Go through your own bank. If you can walk in there with a check from your bank for the amount that YOU want to pay, then you are on the high ground. I say get financing through your bank for MSRP and tell the dealer "take it or leave it". If you can show them a check that is ready to cash, they will be more willing to sell at YOUR price. To them, that is like buying with cash basically. They get their commission right away, no extra work on the financing etc...

Take their offer to another Toyota dealership and see what THEY can do to beat it. Never take their financing unless you HAVE to. You can almost ALWAYS get better financing on your own. The finance office is where they make a lot of their profit. In fact, MOST of their profits.

Go to a site like Edmunds and do some research into what you should be paying. Call some dealers and ask them to fax you some quotes, then play them against each other.

Or better yet, buy one that is a year old... you'll save a bundle right there.
http://www.edmunds.com/new/2011/toyota/highlander/1013513...

http://www.edmunds.com/finder/type.suv.html;f=%2Busein%3A...

FWIW, when I looked up the 2010 and 2011 Highlanders on Edmunds, in your zip code, there are no manufacturer to customer or manufacturer to dealer incentives or rebates, except for a $500 cash rebate if you finance with them AND are military. So.. the line about $3,000 if they finance with you... that is just how much they can afford to drop the price.

Try the internet sales department of the dealerships...they tend to give you more of the bottom line.

get the loan through them then turn around and refi.

Toni,
What always works for us is first of all checking the blue book, we print it, after that we go an visit two or three dealerships and look at the price, and compare offers, then we go and for a lower offer, we always let them know that we will go check other dealerships, then when we come back we tell the seller we found a better offer and they always reduce the price a bit more, also we make them an offer, like we say I can give you this much, with this much down(if any) and they'll work with you. Hope you find this helpful. Good luck!!

Make a CASH deal. That's the way we do it.

Have you looked into a "gently used" car from a rental agency? We just bought our 2009 Dodge Caravan from Enterprise and feel we got an excellent price.

Haven't read all the other answers, but I'll give you our experience. We bought a Toyota Highlander, brand new in '06 for $30K, off the lot & that included a few upgrades - $39K sounds way too overpriced. But we bought ours in NV. We secured a loan through our bank before ever stepping foot onto a lot. The purchasing power felt WAY better, since we weren't haggling over exact car payments, but rather the total purchase price. Wrote a check once we made the deal & drove off the lot. No more dealings with the salespeople & it's been a fantastic automobile for us & our 2 young boys. That being said, if you see the opportunity to get a slightly used model, go for it. Good luck!

Check Kelly blue book online. They have calculator to use on there retail, used, and trade. Make sure you put in all the specifics when asked so you get an accurate price. Might give you a better idea of the true value for the price they are asking. Also help you with negotiations, they really can't argue with KBB.

**I think the calculator is actually called "find a car" or something like that.

The only other suggestion is buy the car at the last day/few days at the end of the month. They want their numbers to look good and are more "hungry" to sell.

If you are rich and money is not a problem, take the deal.

If that is not the case, then do some work and save $3,000 to $10,000+. My son just brought home a car, Chevy Traverse, one year old, almost 30,000 miles and bought it for 50% of list price. It has all kinds of bells and whistles. I think he said he found it on Craig's list. He bought it from a new car dealer over the internet, and flew out to drive it home.

It all comes down to what you are willing to do to save money. If $10,000 is a so what, make the deal. If you'd rather have the money in your pocket, then do some more research and get a much better deal.

Good luck to you and yours.

If I'm not to late. Go online and vet a bid from their online Dept. At Honda they offered prices lower than thy could on the floor. I also found a forum online for my Odyssey so I knew what a good price was... The 3K might be the standard "rebate" the dealer has and online folks research and share what the current deals are that you should expect.

You've gotten some good advice so far. I would book out your new vehicle on kbb.com with all the options. It will tell you. Invoice, MSRP, and rebates. You can then call the internet/fleet managers of your local dealers and tell them you want invoice + the rebate. I have gotten this pricing on all my vehicles for the last 12 years. Most of the time I've gone through the auto buying consultant at my credit union. Its a whole new car buying experience. If you already belong to a credit union see if they have an auto buying service called MAPS. Members Advantage Plus. If not then join Patelco they do, Holly and Debbie will get you a great deal. Patelco also has great rates starting at 3.75 if you need financing. Good luck.

All the advice below is great. I'll add:

Consumer Reports will give you the price the dealer paid to get the car. They will also tell you what you can expect for a mark-up, because let's face it, a popular car doesn't need to be sold at cost. Financing, incentives, MSRP, etc are all listed as well. You'll have to pay a nominal fee for each model of car you're looking at, but it's well worth it. So shop around, find the exact car you want, go to consumerreports.com and order the report for your car. Find financing at your bank too, it's another place where dealers make a ton of money. Then go deal "up" from the cost rather than "down" from the MSRP. GL!

We just purchased a car 2 weeks ago. It is a used one but we spent about a month just watching the dealer/car market and seeing what the vehicles were actually going for and how long they were sitting on the lots. We also checked autotraders.com daily and craigslist daily. 1 dealer we thought we could totally trust (we bought 2 cars from before) came back and try to royally screw us! He found us a car that was the basic model (I chose to go used so I could afford all the bells and whistles) and was WAY over our budget we told him. He kept trying to tell us how great the car was and how it was so worth it and we would be soo lucky to have this vehicle. We ended up walking away from it b/c it wasn't what we wanted. We ended up finding everything I wanted plus some just by driving 2 hours away and finding a dealer who went bankrupt and just was basically giving the cars away! I got a fully loaded Limited Durango for only $6K!! The dealer was trying to sell the basic model for $16K!!! So just by driving 2 hrs away and being patient we saved $10K!! So, as others have said if they are offering to take $3K off just like that... then they would have room to take another $2K off. Also, I would check around to see what other "offers" are out there.

Good luck!

Be prepared to walk away if they don't want to deal. It's amazing how motivated people can be when they see you walking out the door. Also, on TV yesterday they said the best day to buy a car is Monday. No one is at the dealership and they are more willing to deal.