Wife has a 2013 Ford C-Max. She wants to switch to a non hybrid small or mid size suv. She's wanting to try to trade it in. Obviously selling outright would in theory give us the best price. If she does decide to trade it in, how much does the price of the suv she wants, actually play regarding trade in value? Is a dealership more likely to give less trade in value if she buys a 3-4 year old suv (ie cheaper) as opposed to a brand new one? Or would trade in be the same/similar dealership formula regardless of the price range of whatever suv she wants to buy?
Negotiate on the price of the new car independent from the trade in on the old car. Get the lowest possible price on the new car, then trade in the old car for the highest possible price you can get. If there is a Carmax near you, go ahead and get a bottom dollar figure for trade in from them before you ever go to the dealership.
Typically, the trade value is the current (to the week) wholesale auction value--what used to be in a little black book is now pretty much online. They can look up the number of days of supply that the area has for those cars as used vehicles and use that to determine how much they want to flex upwards. I would suspect that as a hybrid you may want to wait until there's an uptick in gas prices…
A lot depends on the car she is buying. If it is a model that they want to move and has some overhead, they will give a better trade in.
With a "but.." they will always start with the lowball.
pinchvalve wrote:
A lot depends on the car she is buying. If it is a model that they want to move and has some overhead, they will give a better trade in.
This whole statement still implies that you are letting the dealership give you "blended" pricing where the new car price is combined with the trade in price.
Like advised above, I like to keep the three transactions separate.
1. New car price.
2. Trade in price.
3. Financing rate (which can be gotten elsewhere.)
I'll share a personal example. When the current Ford Escape were first introduced, my M-I-L wanted one. Since the model was so new, they really were not bending on the price (and the old models were still on the lot.) For that reason, we bought the car through The Ford Friend and Family Plan (x-plan.) This set a predetermined price for the car that could be gotten at any dealership. Purchase price was set.
For trade-in, I figured that I would sell the car myself but asked for a trade in price from the two dealerships we visited.
Small town dealership offered $10,500 for the trade.
Busier Ford dealership offer $9.000 for the trade. When I balked at the price, they moved to $10,600 (without knowing of the other's offer.)
The purchase price was the same from either dealership and I ultimately sold the car myself via CL in 4 days to a buyer who drove in 3 hours to buy it for $12,500.
I used that trade in quote as the basis for which dealer to buy from. I went with the tiny store since they did not first try to steal the car out from under us like the larger dealership did.
We financed the car privately. Not dealer financing.
