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Honda CR-V LX AWD
$22,550
I was told that the model I wanted was not on the lot (NYC) but on the way to the dealer, hence no VIN. The car is due to arrive within ten days. In the meantime, I submitted a credit check form and a $100 deposit. Where did I go wrong?
Thank you for your help!
What did you do wrong? Well, you took yourself out of the market with the deposit. And any deposit to a dealer, except for really unique or special order cars, should be refundable. Most people make deposits by credit card so you are likely covered there anyway.
Why is it a problem that you took yourself out of the market? Well, if you keep shopping, you may yet find a better deal nearby. And lots can happen in ten days - the CR-V in transit could get damaged, or the dealer may try to bait and switch you at the last minute and load you up on fees or accessories you don't want. If that happens, you're faced with starting over, with less inventory to choose from and you'll be shopping at the start of the month. The better deals generally happen at the end of a month.
So, enjoy the anticipation, but I'd keep shopping. And if you find a better deal, let your dealer know that you've decided to get one "today" and ask for your deposit back. You won't be the first person to do that.
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2015 Subaru Outback 3.6R / 2024 Kia Sportage Hybrid SX Prestige
Last time I bought a car, I went into the dealership armed with the exact invoice price, taxes, tags, title, and rebates. I knew what was likely their bottom line and what to shoot for. This time, I can't seem to find consistent information on it. The numbers don't seem to add up and always include different things, some of which might be regional.
Edmunds website suggests that invoice price is $22,022. Then it adds 880 destination and 150 "advertising" (which I would never pay for) minus a regional adjustment (zip: 21044) of -162. Somehow this adds up to $22,952 (?). However, the site says nothing about taxes. I believe MD has 6% sales tax. OTOH, I've seen lower "invoice" prices elsewhere which makes me think it might be included in this price. Also, we've contacted a couple dealerships by email, one of which gave us an OTD price of $23,560, which actually kind of makes sense as a first bid given $22,950 total base price. Most dealers gave us $23,800 to $24,000.
If the invoice + tax is really $22,022 then it's 22,902 with destination. Since I see nothing about rebates anywhere, isn't that the bottom line? Therefore, I would start negotiating at $22,800 and try to settle around $23,100, or perhaps $23,400 with the roof rails and cargo tray. Does my math work out?
Also, I keep reading in this thread about aiming for $1,500 below invoice... are you suggesting to aim for something lower than dealer cost? I'm confused by this logic unless there are big rebates out there.
In the forum, we typically include destination in the "invoice". I ignore ad fees too. So an LX FWD invoices for $22,022 plus $880 or $22,902. $1,500 off that number gives you a target price of $21,402 before taxes and fees.
Assuming 6% tax, I get~$22,686. Now assume the roof rails and cargo tray and doc fees add another $300(?) and your OTD target is $22,986. So, in theory at least, your may be able to shave ~$500 off your lowest quote to date.
You really shouldn't be seeing lower invoice prices elsewhere and if you do, the difference is likely that $880 destination fee.
That said, math isn't my strong suit so recheck the numbers. But my math is close to yours I think.
On to your last question - no one really knows dealer cost. The spread between invoice and MSRP has shrunk over the years and there's lots of manufacturer to dealer incentives we don't know about, plus month end bonuses, end of quarter bonuses and other spiffs and hood money. Plus holdback. That's why dealers can sell below invoice and still make money.
Good luck and let us know how it goes.
Quickly checking if this is a good deal, I am going to get this today in Bloomington, Illinois.
2015 Honda CR-V EX-L 4WD
$30,275.00 MSRP
$27,442.84 Special Internet Sale Price ( Including Destination-Good thru the Month of August only)
$25.00 CVR
$168.43 Doc Fee
$1,727.27 6.25% Sales Tax
$196.00 New Plates and Title
$29,559.53 Total Vehicle Cost
Please let me know your inputs. Thanks in advance.
New dealer that will deliver the car I want from another state ( NH) right to my front door
CRV EX AWD 28,000$ out the door pricing..I also made him include mud flaps, all season weather hard rubber mats too. ( all season pro pac)
This price includes everything tax, title, admin fees of $499 which he says he cant change?
27,675 start
-2500 including pro pac
Also got him tocome down an extra 357.60 because I chose the less popular mountain air color and told him that would sit longer than the others.
Dont know my interest rate yet because you guys told me to make the deal first. Can be worse than the 4-4.9% everyone seems to offer?
It looks like your selling price is $24,818. Great deal so far if my math (and yours) is right.
That $499 admin fee? That's the dealer's profit. It's negotiable but whether you can chop it depends on how hungry the dealer is.
Looks like there's some confusion about financing stragety.
The usual recommendation is to get prequalified for a car loan before you go shopping. That way you know your rate before you even set foot in the dealer. You can get prequalified at your bank or credit union or online.
Once you do the deal, when the dealer says we can do this payment based on x% rate, you can then come back and say Big Bank already approved me at y% rate. Most dealers will meet or beat Big Bank's rate since the dealer makes additional profit packaging loans.
Bottom line? You got a great price and you whacked an additional $357.60 for the less popular color that helps offset the admin fee. And the CR-V is delivered to your house. What's not to like?
One caveat - accept delivery in the daylight or at least in a well lit garage. If something is wrong, either refuse delivery or get a written "will fix" letter. But if you have a ding in the side, it's going to be a hassle driving to the dealer to get it fixed.
It takes weeks to close on a house, but the actual signing part rarely takes more than thirty minutes. There's no reason not to do that with cars, other than people want to be able to drive their new car home the same day.
If you don't want to haggle make the deal its a OK deal for this time of the year.
Your at 829 below invoice after minusing the doc fee ( $168 ). keep on negotiating. The best deals can be had pitting dealers against each other and waiting. Special internet price means you did no negotiating yet. You and everyone else can get this deal on the table.
This is what I would do to make a better deal . Your e- price is good for 3 more days no reason to rush into this deal .
Call 5/ 10 other dealerships right now telling each one for $26,850 I buy said model from you NOW. . If your other targeted dealerships decline..... Go make your e-price deal. No harm no foul.
Here is how I would start my calls today or tomm. Then move onto next dealership shooting for a 26.8 target price or lower.
I would call the next nearest Honda dealer. Tell them listen $26,900 is my best offer your closer to me. Beat this offer and I buy right now. Make each dealer commit to so kind of buy it today price . Put each dealer on the spot for the sale. This is how you will make a better deal. Trust me. Dealers who want the sale will give you a price.
98% of the time when I negotiate for any new vehicle I start my negotiations on the 2nd to last day/ last day of any month or at one of the ending quarters.
Good luck
23 Telluride SX-P X-Line, 23 Camry XSE
I wish I was with you right now we'd eat these guys up. lol.
23 Telluride SX-P X-Line, 23 Camry XSE
Sorry trying to help a handful of buyers right now............. I'm all over the map. Bear with me I'll get back to you.
Tks.
23 Telluride SX-P X-Line, 23 Camry XSE
New dealer that will deliver the car I want from another state ( NH) right to my front door
CRV EX AWD 28,000$ out the door pricing..I also made him include mud flaps, all season weather hard rubber mats too. ( all season pro pac)
This price includes everything tax, title, admin fees of $499 which he says he cant change? I have to get new plates and registration for 140$
27,675 start
-2500 including pro pac
Also got him tocome down an extra 357.60 because I chose the less popular mountain air color and told him that would sit longer than the others.
Dont know my interest rate yet because you guys told me to make the deal first. Can be worse than the 4-4.9% everyone seems to offer?
Includes the 2015 CRV EX
All season floor mats
Trunk tray
Splash guards
ALL Taxes
ALL Fees
Plates
Registration
2 free oil changes/tire rotations
And free carwashes whenever I come in for service
I will put $3161.98 down to finance $25,000
Good or not? I think this is a good deal
Be gentle on me! LOL
Sounds like you have a deal on the table to me, especially considering where you are up there.
23 Telluride SX-P X-Line, 23 Camry XSE
On my last car, a guy was desperate to hit a bonus and he went $500 below what I thought was a crazy good offer I had in my pocket.
Again, never give them a #. They give you a # or they don't to sell you the car. Its the only way to find the true bottom price.
I understand your point but that tactic don't always work for a rookie buyer. Here is why? Alot of buyers get nowhere fast if they keep on asking for best price.( you get dealers idea of a good price not mine . ) A lot of buyers in here have No to very little negotiating skills some have no clue what there models invoice price is and are in negotiations to buy with dealerships. These are the folks who benefit most from my low and high target prices across the country.
Above poster was on his way to dealer to buy. ( didn't even know if it was a good deal or not ) that's why I gave him a more respectable number.
More skilled negotiators like yourself and others can pull off a better deal with your mentioned approach.
Calls and emails to dealerships is the best way to start off the negotiation process eliminating the bad dealers that wont give you pricing or negotiate this way.
23 Telluride SX-P X-Line, 23 Camry XSE
Of course, I have other dealers emailing me at 10pm begging for me to come in tomorrow. Shouldn't the AWD be $800-$1000 more than 2WD? Should I bring the 23.4 AWD offer to the other dealers and ask for 22.4 OTD on the 2WD? I actually didn't think I'd get the LX 2WD that low...
Maybe you should tell the dealers that you'll come in to the shop that makes you the best email offer.
And yeah, I'd say the AWD can easily cost ~$1,400 more on the high side, using TMV numbers.
However, if you go the dealer and they have 12 AWD LX models lined up, then you'll have a better chance of scoring a deal, I think.
Translation: cheap price on AWD may not carry over to FWD.
Around here, if you had a 5 yr old CR-V to sell, AWD is snapped up, and the FWD would sit in your driveway for a couple of months..
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But the point is well-taken that it's marketability is different. I'll poke a few dealers and see what they say about $22,600 on the FWD model. However, $23,400 for the AWD is actually better than all the email offers that I received so far on the FWD models! I feel like it would be tough to beat that, relatively speaking.
$24,300 Price
$199 Admin (standard for the area)
$24,999 Out the Door
$1,738 off invoice not counting mud guards
#winning
Almost had another dealer down to $24,000 + 199. But they decided I was bluffing when I kept telling them I had them beat. Finally they threw out $24,000 even and I said that was a done deal if approved. Manager denied it saying I was full of crap.
We went to dealership and said the AWD deal was better, threatening to go with our original offer for the AWD if they didn't sweeten it with roof rails for a few hundred dollars. They wouldn't budge a single dollar! We almost did walk out, but we decided that $22,875 was still pretty good and we could always do the roof rails and cross bars after-market, for 1/3 to 1/2 price the dealership wanted.
So we took it for $22,875 OTD with no options. I don't remember the full price breakdown, but this was MD with 6% sales tax. That's actually a bit lower than we thought we'd be able to do, so we were happy.
On that note, any recommendations for roof rails and cross bars? We did some quick searches and it seemed like we could get the hardware for about $300 and install it ourselves in an hour. At least the cross-bars looked really easy, not sure about the rails.
Thanks for your guys' help. It's nice to have a community to bounce ideas and numbers off of! I can tell you that the market is pretty hot right now, I still have dealerships emailing and calling constantly. We probably could've done even better if we were patient, but it's nice to have the rest of the weekend to enjoy life with our new car instead of spending hours running around negotiating for another $150
I had Yakima racks from '99 until last year when I sold my last canoe and gave the racks to my nephew. I got Yaks in '99 because I got a pro deal. Otherwise I may have gone Thule or even Sportrack. They all seem pretty good. But mine were towers with clips that gripped the internal rain gutter. For rails, you may be looking at drilling holes in the roof.
There's a few Honda dealers who sell accessories at a discount so nose around there too. Freight may be a killer.
What do you plan to haul anyway? I'm so spoiled with being to put bikes and 4x8' sheet goods in the back of my minivan, I don't know what to do when we downsize. A hitch rack is attractive for the bikes.
And congrats on the ride!
Seattle
Dealership 1 $23770
Dealership 2 $22800
No accessories on either.
I think based off of this, either one of these prices is a good deal? Post tax and all.
Back to the negotiations, I should mention that the original guy who offered $23,400 OTD on the LX AWD hasn't actually called us back (after he called with the offer at 9:45pm last night!). I'm actually quite confused by that. And the final dealership never even asked who offered that price. I am not a big fan of straight-up lying, but we might as well been lying. It seems too easy!
No dealer added accessories on the car.
Manufacture date on the door is 8/15.
No vibrations that I can tell w/AC and radio off in drive/park while stopped at idle.
$29900 + tax + tag/title($80) + $234 in doc/etc fees
Salesman is saying I also have to pay for the upgraded security system for an additional $795. Hopefully they can just remove it...
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2015 Subaru Outback 3.6R / 2024 Kia Sportage Hybrid SX Prestige
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Just don't let them pretend like they did you any favors -- you should never feel guilty for turning down an "optional" accessory that suddenly became non-optional. For instance while negotiating, they may say "but we already gave you this thing for free, we can't give you more discount!" You say "that was your mistake not mine, remove it or find me a car without it if you don't want to take that loss. The other dealerships don't force me to buy things I never wanted.".
If you're in an area with 5+ dealerships within 30 minutes, it's usually quite effective.
Of course, that's probably an issue with how most all dealers prep new cars.
- $20,120 base price
- $880 destination
- $300 "Documentation Fee"
- $4 "Tire Recycling"
- $1,278 MD Sales tax (6%)
- $295 title and registration ($275+20)
Total: $22,877Obviously destination, tax, title and registration is mandatory for them. Adding everything else together means the dealership kept $20,424 for the sale. According to Edmunds, the invoice price is $22,022, so that means we got $1,600 below invoice. Is that math right?
And that was all by telling them that the other dealership gave us $23,400 OTD on the AWD model, and we knew it was an epic deal but we'd rather pay less for the 2WD model even if it wasn't quite as good. Also, we ended up with the cargo tray which was in the car when we test drove it, and we got them to agree to keep it in there for free. Even if we had to pay for it, it would be worth it!
Y'all done good either way.
(Usual disclaimers about my math)
I always considered the factory invoice+destination+taxes+title+registration to be base price the dealership pays to other parties, and everything they get above that goes towards keeping the lights on, paying salesmen, etc. Paying the employees that handle documentation, loans, title transfers, etc, is part of their cost of doing business. As far as I'm concerned, they could have just as easily made the "base price" 20,420 and had doc fee zero and everyone's books still add up the same. If that's the case, then I think it's just $1,600 below invoice. (I'm not complaining)
Part of the reason I'm posting this is because I actually read through all 36 pages of this thread looking for LX 2WD prices/experiences before we started. There wasn't a single, solid price breakdown or any OTD prices paid, which made it a tad harder to ground ourselves and set our own expectations. It appears that LX 2WD is not a very popular model!
In here I guess I tend to focus on invoice + destination as the selling price jumping off point, and right now lots of buyers of CR-Vs are beating that number. I don't worry about the TTL since they are fixed. That pretty much leaves the doc fee (aka "profit") to negotiate over.
- Use edmunds to lookup factory invoice price ($22,022)
- Do a search for your state to look up taxes (Maryland is 6%, so about $1,300)
- Look up title, tags and registration fees ($295 in MD)
- Add those together with the $880 for destination ($22,022 + 1300 + 295 + 880 = $24,497)
- That number is the dealer's approx total cost to sell you the car
- Pick a target "below invoice". Apparently $1,500 is aggressive but doable on the last 3 or 4 days of the month. Subtract that from above ($24,497 - $1,500 = $22,997).
- Therefore, for the LX 2WD, ~$23,000 is your target out-the-door (OTD) price for the car with no options/accessories. You should aim for a few hundred lower than that in negotiations, and don't be afraid to walk out if you can't get them close to $23k.
If it's the last 1-2 days of the month and you've been pestering 8+ dealerships playing them off each other over email and phone, it sounds likes $1,800+ below invoice is doable. One of the dealerships is going to have a desperate sales manager who needs to meet a quota (or a bonus) and willing to take a big loss to sell just one more car. And you only need one dealership to break. Sometimes you need to physically go in, negotiate as far as they'll go, then walk out saying it's not good enough and you're going to another dealership. But make sure you leave your number and tell them to call you if they change their mind. You'd be surprised how tough these guys can be when you're in the store, but soften up once you actually leave and they realize they might've lost the sale.My last comment/question: Based on all these calculations, the dealerships must not be paying that much for invoice, or must be getting some kind of blanket rebates/incentives from the manufacturers. When we did our initial email spray-and-pray for prices, all of them were at least $500 below invoice. I can't imagine they could survive starting their negotiations at a net loss for the dealership. There must be something else going on.
Surprising tips for car shopping in Internet age (USA Today)
From what I've read, it sounds like the bottom line for honda and/or CR-Vs is probably around "invoice" minus $1,700. If I was the manufacturers, I'd try to keep that a moving target, over different styles, models or even years.
23 Telluride SX-P X-Line, 23 Camry XSE
2015 CRV EX-L FWD NO NAV
MSRP incl destination - $29,025
Invoice Price - $27,300
Lowest Internet Sales Manager Quotes in DFW - $25,300 - $25,175 (Huggins & Denton)
Their catch was the price included no dealer adds - so I asked them to take them off and they both balked.
Denton GSM William Stalik did offer $25,800 with no dealer adds.
Doc Fees of $125 plus TT&L - Hope this helps.