Ask for 2017 ACURA RDX AWD W/ TECH price in MD?

jf111371

I am a novice and live in Maryland with 6% tax rate. I planned to buy a 2017 ACURA RDX AWD W/ TECH. The MSRP is $41,710. I would do 60 month financing, and would likely trade in my old car. What an OTD price is good? Any suggestions would be appreciated!!!

stever

Too many variables for us to get you an OTD price.

So think of this as two or three transactions.

You'll shop for the best new car deal.

You'll shop for the best trade-in price.

And you'll shop for the best interest rate.

The interest rate is easy. The trick is to get pre-approved at your bank or credit union or on-line. You'll find out your credit tier that way and you'll learn if you qualify for any APR incentives - the best incentive rates typically are enjoyed by those in the upper credit tiers. Once you have a rate, you'll invite the dealer to beat your rate. Often they can because dealers make money putting loan packages together.

For a good value on your trade-in, you can appraise it here. If you have a CarMax in your area, they will give you a written quote - that's handy to show to the dealer as you negotiate. If the dealer low balls your trade, you pull out your quote from CarMax and say thanks anyway, I'm going to sell it to them. Chances are the dealer will meet or beat your CarMax quote. There's a great discussion here in the forum that will tell you what your trade is worth too - Real World Trade-In Values.

For the new car purchase, you can use the Make | Model tabs above and dial in your RDX, stick in your MD zip, add in the colors and any options, and you'll wind up with invoice, MSRP and the True Market Value average price paid for your area.

Your goal is to beat the TMV average (after all, you are here doing your homework, so you should be able to do better than the average consumer, even if you are a novice. Most of us only buy new cars every ~5 or so years, so we're all pretty much novices compared to the salespeople at the dealer).

Once you figure out a good selling price for the new car (often somewhere between TMV and invoice), you add in your own state and local taxes to get an OTD number. So selling price plus 6% will be your target. The dealer will try to add in various fees or extra packages to pad their profit. Pro packs, paint protection, tint and extended warranties are big profit centers for the dealer - if you think you want some of the offerings, you need to negotiate those items too.

stever

Okay are you still with us?

If you've drilled down, you should have arrived at this page.

The first thing to note is that we don't have invoice up yet. That's okay, we'll have it soon or you can check with Kelley or NADA or one of the other buying sites. Invoice is heavily used (I use it all the time) but it's not a real number. The manufacturers give the dealers a lot of bonuses and spiffs that we don't know about to lower the actual cost of the car to the dealer. Plus there's holdback on most brands. Acura gives their dealers 2% of the base MSRP to cover holdback.

And now you know how people can buy cars now and then for below invoice.

Dealers don't like it when you bring up holdback. I enjoy mentioning it because it tells the dealer that I've done my research. Shopping OTD is similar code language. But dealers have to make a profit to stay in business so you may as well forget negotiating holdback. In fact, the beauty of OTD negotiating is that you are always focused on the bottom line and you don't care about holdback or what the dealer is charging on their paperwork for the doc fee or whatever. The bottom line cost to you is all you care about.

We show a regional adjustment for Maryland of around -$800 (i.e. $800 lower in MD vs another area). I think that's because Honda is very competitive in the NOVA region and dealers are pretty aggressive with their numbers. So we have TMV coming in at $39,924, about $1,800 below MSRP.

My guess is that your selling price should be around $1,000 below that. A different make at this time of year, what with the new models being introduced, may go for MSRP. But this year, sales are slipping so I don't think too many dealers are trying to be greedy.

One last trick is to check inventory links. Our inventory link shows over 500 RDXs within 50 miles of Baltimore. Around 200 of those are AWDs with the Tech package.

I think that's a good selection for a big city and that should help your negotiating position.

jf111371

Thanks, Stever. Your information is super helpful.

Clint

I have purchased several Acura vehicles in Maryland. I have found Rosenthal Acura in Germantown is fairly easy to deal with. Also Radley and Pohnaka in Virginia and Norris in Maryland.

The key is to have a price before you visit. I have had success buying through this process.

First I find the invoice for the vehicle. Recognize invoice is not the cost to the dealer. There are many hidden dealer incentives such as stair step or volume type incentives.

I then reduce the invoice by hold back and any incentives. These are available on Edmunds.

This gives me a starting price. You may want to increase this by 2-3 percent to allow a dealer profit. This is my price goal.

Also, check Edmund's prices paid forums to see if people are paying less than invoice. If they are, that is a sure thing there are some big incentives.

Also, check True Car, but do not buy through TC. Reduce the TC price by $300, which is the fee dealer's pay TC for a sale. This should be the maximum you would need to pay.

Also, check Edmunds price promise.

Contact all dealers and ask for a price. I ignore any dealer which will not provide a price.

Select one dealer and visit. Allow the dealer to make the first offer. It should be a bit less than they offered on line.

Then tell the sales person your price, which should be a few hundred less than your price goal. This is likely an aggressive price but, since it is based on actual numbers, it is not silly.

The sales person will pretend to be shocked. The sales person will likely ask the sales manager to become involved. This is what you want as the sales manager is the only person who can actually deal.

Negotiate only up from your number, not down from the dealer's number.

If you get a good price, great. If not, walk away.

A good thing to recognize is a buyer rarely gets the dealer's best price until the sales manager is involved and until the sales manager believes the buyer is walking away.

stever

Great info, thanks @Clint!