Is Invoice-Based Pricing a Thing of the Past?

vehicula

I will soon negotiate my 9th auto lease (over a period of 27 years.) This time I’ll be leasing a new 2025 Honda Accord Touring Hybrid with a Honda Financial Services lease. Before the pandemic, price negotiations were always based on a vehicle’s invoice price. Is that no longer true - are negotiations now based on MSRP? So I should look for the best discount from the MSRP? Thanks for your advice.

Michaell

Use the Price Checker link, below, to get Edmunds research on pricing for your area.

vehicula

sigh ... I'll look for an answer to my question elsewhere.

Michaell

vehicula said:

sigh ... I'll look for an answer to my question elsewhere.

We moderators don't track pricing, as it's very make/model/trim/location dependent; that's why we point you to the Price Checker tool, which aggregates all the information posted by Edmunds members.

In general, there are not many discounts from MSRP lately. My daughter just bought a Kia Sportage Hybrid, and I had to work hard to get any sort of discount from sticker.

MickUSNret

“vehicula” brings up a great topic here. Edmunds.com “was” a great site to do research on in order to find all info needed to negotiate a price. I first used the site back in late 1990’s and continued to use it until my last purchase in 2014. It was 1 of 3 sites I used to get invoice pricing on all items on the vehicle except dealer installed items i.e. “pin striping”. Something happened between 2011 and 2020. Either the websites received $$$ monies from advertisers such as the auto industry and shut down the capability of finding invoice pricing of new vehicles. Edmunds.com used to be a great site for vehicle shoppers. Unfortunately that is no longer true. Edmunds provided great articles on “how to”! It is the First website that I read an article written by a reporter who went under cover, became a car salesman, and reported on what happens at car dealerships. Edmunds is the website that taught me about “hold back” and “dealer incentives”. Unfortunately for the vehicle shopper…the ability to walk into a dealership and compare the actual invoice price to the itemized window sticker (MSRP) of the vehicle your actually looking at is no longer available to the shopper. It is truly sad about what Edmunds.com has become. I want the old website back.

kyfdx

It's always been that the best way to get the best price is to comparison shop. See which dealer gives you the best deal.

It was always a small section of time when the invoice price minus holdback was a great deal that un-savvy shoppers didn't know about.