Getting the Best Deal on a Good Used Car

This Article will give you a crash course on negotiations, price, shopping, and save you Thousands of Dollars.

Tools & Resources You will Need as you Read this Advice

 

It is always a hard decision to make when you are purchasing a used car. There are many things that you need to lookout for, the worst thing that can happen to you is buying a new car and having to take it to the shop the next day. 

The first thing is price you want to make sure you do your own appraisal go to Edmunds.com and appraise the car yourself. That way you can negotiate the price, since usually the markup is about $4,000.

Try to avoid non-franchised dealers: Non-franchised dealers are dealerships that are not part of a name brand dealership. For example if you go to a Ford store and they have used cars that is a franchised dealer, if you see a used car lot on the side of a busy road such as Joe’s Motors, then Joe’s Motors is not a franchised dealer. Non-franchised dealerships obtain their inventory from larger Dealership auctions. There are some good cars that you can buy at auctions, like government auctions. The auctions these small time dealers are buying are basically bottom of the barrow autos, for good auction resources see the bottom of this page.

What is wrong with buying a car from a non-franchise dealer who purchased a car at an auction?

Buying a car from a certified Government auction is ok, but buying a car from these small dealers could cost you big money in repairs.

Let us look at an example: I go to a Lincoln store and buy a brand new Navigator, and I will be trading in my 1999 Ford Pick-up.  My Pick-up has 120,000 miles; odds are the dealership is not going to want to keep that vehicle in their lot. Why? The car has too many miles and considered booked-out. Booked-out means, that a major auto loan lender can no longer finance the value of that truck. The loan is considered a high-risk loan, since in the event that you cannot pay your loan, if the vehicle is repossessed they cannot recoup their invested dollars. My pick-up now becomes a cash only purchase, and makes it difficult to sell on the lot.  A franchised dealer is also less willing to get a bad reputation for selling a high mileage auto that caused serious problems to their customers. So what happens to my pick-up? Almost all franchised dealers have silent auctions on which wholesalers bid on their inventory. Where I use to work, they would take all the high mileage trade-ins and set them up in an empty lot where they would host an auction every Wednesday and Friday. These wholesalers then buy the cars and make minor repairs to them. When the cars have been “touched-up”, they are ready to be sold at Joe’s Motors, on the side of a busy intersection.

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