Negotiate enough car deals and you’ll learn very quickly that the people who end up with the happiest outcomes are those who have the wits to be able to think on their feet and pivot in a different direction as needed.
This negotiation certainly had that in spades!
The first came the night before Ben and Jessica were due to come to Raleigh for our car-shopping outing today.
It turns out that Jessica got a bit of really bad news and a huge bill that would make the worst spots on the “Game of Life” look like chicken feed by comparison so it’d now be Ben walking into the dealer with a new and smaller qualification letter in his back pocket as he’d be taking up the loan on a new vehicle.
A cardinal rule of catching something nasty is not going round breathing on other people! I thought my mechanical misadventures were bad…I wasn’t intending them to be a challenge to others to surpass! 😉
Anywho, that’d present no problem…the new number was probably still workable with the RAV4’s we were considering with a bit of pushing and shoving of numbers on the salesperson’s offers back in our favour.
Based on the numbers I was seeing advertised on the sticker of our two most likely candidate vehicles, the potential for a deal was still plausible enough that we were off to the lot to see what we may see.
Speaking of which, these were the two that caught both of our eyes whilst looking over the inventory on the dealer’s web site…
When we arrived on the lot round 1430 or so, it was rather pleasant to be able to get out of our respective vehicles without being accosted by a salesperson desperate to keep their place in the queue.
We walk in the door and the sales manager lets us know that he’ll be finding some salesperson for us but that it’d take a bit because they were rather busy for a Sunday afternoon. There seemed to be enough foot traffic in the place that it was plausible enough but after five minutes of waiting, we were literally turning to walk out the door which seemed to up the sense of urgency in the sale’s manager.
Mind you, all we were wanting to do was wander round the lots to see what there was to see whilst he found whoever our victim was going to be today but I’ll admit that I was a bit pleased we’d won a point in the “who is more desperate to be here” psychological subtext game! 😉
We get directions to where we might find the used RAV4s and their Camry and Corolla cousins and cop a walk toward them. Eventually a salesperson catches up to us and now he’s getting to be a contestant in a game of VENDOR OLYMPICS on an extremely hot and humid afternoon.
We kept bouncing between the various RAV4s on the lot concentrating on the two that were pictured before finally asking our new friend to find the keys to the darker RAV4 LE on the left.
He buggers off (probably wishing he had one of those golf carts!) and comes back with some bad news…some naughty salesperson had the keys a day ago and didn’t return it to the proper secured storage locker and the likelihood he’d come in to bring us those keys was not looking so hot.
That’s when our friend confessed that he normally works a desk selling cars over the Internet and that he’d been seconded on to us to cover for the many salespeople who’d skived off from working on this lovely hot afternoon.
So he heads off to get the keys to the silver RAV4 XLE so we can have a ferret round and listen to the engine and do the usual car buyer antics like a test drive.
Whilst we’re doing so and looking at a Toyota C-HR, a rather Hispanic family is wandering over and have a hard look at the silver RAV4 and I’m not too proud to admit that the thought “sucks to be y’all” went through my head when they saw our guy come back with the keys and open up that RAV4.
Speaking of the Toyota C-HR, it’s apparently been discontinued in the US and it’s not hard to discern why they’re only selling it in Japan. It’s really weird looking and I’ve got to imagine the sight lines (especially toward the blind spots!) must really suck! I shared a theory that the C-HR looks like a Toyota mated with a Pokemon and that black C-HR was the result. Our Internet guy didn’t exactly disagree…
Jessica goes for a test drive and Ben and I are off to the showroom so I can start working the numbers I’m planning on going with negotiating for that silver RAV4 XLE. I’m already of a mind that thanks to the other sales guy bogarting the keys to the darker one Jessica liked more that I’m going to ignore the higher trim and proceed off the lower price of the RAV4 LE that we weren’t going to have a chance to negotiate.
Just as I’m getting the very slow network to serve up some comparable sales of RAV4s on Edmund’s so I can work out my strategy and how I reckoned the negotiations would go, Jessica has returned and she really liked the RAV4. She and Ben go off to have a bit of a chin wag and come back to the high top table where we’re perched with the second curve ball of the day.
Much as she liked the RAV4’s drive and size, she was a bit concerned about where the final price would land given the dealer’s starting point was so close to the price hard-deck that’d been established.
So she wanted to have a look at the blue coloured Corolla across the way from the RAV4 and see how she liked it.
That was a bit of a surprise and I’d been pretty sure we were RAV4 hunting and would bag one of them.
All of the numbers and strategies I’d come up with was now out the window and we were going to have to wing it.
I could sense she was feeling a bit awkward about doing a switcheroo but honestly these things happen and you just roll with it. It’d honestly do no one any good to get her a vehicle she would like if the financial aspects would be a constant stressor for the next few years.
I’d much rather pivot to the Corolla and reckon up some new numbers that are more palatable for her budget than be all “RAV4 or else”. Both parts of the deal have to work or it’s just going to be a cause for grief down the road.
TIP: don’t get fixated on one particular car on the lot. If the deal works, it works. If it doesn’t because it’s too close to your maximum budget or it’s not what you truly want, then it doesn’t and you should cop a walk. If the salespeople sense you’re in love with the car, you’re likely to get really reamed when all of a sudden they aren’t budging on *ANYTHING*.
So now we’re off to see the blue Corolla and put this much decidedly cheaper car through it’s paces.
Jessica heads off for another test drive in that 2022 Corolla LE with our hostage Internet salesperson as Ben and I retire to the showroom so I can start working up a new set of numbers that we’re going to use if she finds a car she’d like.
It turns out that she did rather like that Corolla in terms of handling and comfort and the lower price tag is certainly more palatable so Ben and Jessica head back out to the lot once again to look over the available Corollas and see if there’s one out there that she might like better than the blue one she just drove.
And wouldn’t you know it…they found a silver 2024 Corolla LE that was barely hatched from it’s egg with only 6,800mi on the clock but that was enough to move it over to the used car lot with the attendant price drop!
I go out to have a bit of a look and listen and then she’s off on another drive around the block which gives me enough time to come up with this bit of scribbling with comparable sales of the 2024’s (and one 2023 but it was close enough in mileage that it’s fair enough) to establish that the price where I’d walk away.
This price is the actual or adjusted sales price and it does not include the non-negotiable tax/tag/title fees or their silly “documentation” or “administration” fee which is negotiable even if the dealer tries to tell you it isn’t.
This price is the only one that matters when you get right down to it because it is the sole driver to the “out-the-door” price that adds in tax/tag/title and any fees the dealer charges.
Based on what I was seeing on Edmunds and Kelley Blue Book of available inventory within 100 miles, I picked $22,500 as the adjusted price target that would cause me to walk away if the dealer refused to come under that number and my target price for an acceptable deal was $21,500.
Any deal that got the adjusted price under that $21,500 number is just that much better a deal!
With lower trim Corollas, there really isn’t a whole lot that one can negotiate out to move the needle that much. The LEs are on the lot to move the XLEs and higher trims which are more profitable with all of the options they’re loaded with from the factory and the port.
As a sanity check, both Edmunds and KBB will give you a price range from the official dealer invoice price on the low end (that no dealer ever truly pays with the holdbacks and other consideration from the manufacturer) and MSRP and the range you should be looking to pay for a reasonable deal on the car.
So where does $21,500 stack up in the grand scheme of things?
The sticker price was already above the MSRP being reported by $850 so $21,500 before tag/tag/title/fees is under what KBB thinks is a fair price. It’s aggressive but not so completely out of the realm of possibility given the mileage on a practically brand-new Corolla that we can’t use that as our target price point.
We started out hunting RAV4s and we ended up finding a baby 2024 Corolla LE.
Game on! 🙂