Anyway, B and I took our first step last night. After going to the funeral home we took a few minutes to digest that process, then went to the local dealership. To recap what we were looking at, B had found a 2016 Buick LaCrosse in really good condition with 70,000 plus miles, heated seats, remote start, and a really pretty color. It was listed for $14,454 which was just out of his price range, but within what we thought was a negotiated price range.
B and I together ran the numbers and figured that with a bad interest rate he could afford a car that was priced at $14,500 Off The Lot. If you haven't bought cars before, Off The Lot price means that's exactly what we pay. All taxes, fees, and license transfers costs are rolled into that. It's the way my father always negotiated for cars, it's the way I've always negotiated for cars and it's the way that most car salesman/financiers seem to be comfortable negotiating. Dad and I were/are comfortable dealing that way because it's a number that I believe the car is worth. My 'worth' of the car might be more or less than the dealerships, but it's what he/I am comfortable paying for it. It works for a monthly payment so long as you know the length of the loan. For example, when I negotiated for Ginger, I figured what I thought the car was worth and knew that I could get a good interest rate from my credit union. I added in the interest, divided it by the number of payments, and got my monthly payment that I thought it was worth.
Now car dealers like dealing that way because they can try to hide all manner of fees into the final price or monthly price. I know some people want to show that they paid so much for a car and then try and negotiate down the documentation fee, the dealership fee, the destination fee, the tax... all kinds of stuff. Fuck that noise. If I think a car is worth $36,000 I could care less if the dealer lists the car for sale at $35,000 with $1,000 in fees or $34,000 with $2,000 in fees. Either way, I'm getting the 'price' I want. So with Ginger, their first counter offer to mine was more. When I told him I could add a bit of a down payment (I had already figured in the down payment), but he'd have to come down on price, he ended up staying the same on price, but got my payment where I wanted by knocking down a fee and getting me financed at 0% interest. I got the payment I wanted, so I signed on the dotted line and drove away in my car.
The more moving pieces you have... car price, interest on the loan, fees, down payment, trade in value... the more things can be moved around, but ultimately if you get the price/payment you want who cares how they get there.
With B and I, we were kind of at the ragged edge. He wanted a payment of $200 (well let's face it, if you read part 1, he wanted NO payment) and would accept a payment around $230. He has no trade in. He has bad credit, hence me being there to get him financing at all. He also has a max down payment of $3,500. We needed to get the car down to $14,500 out the door with B's max down payment and a not-so-horrible interest rate.
Now, as B had been there before, the car salesman knew he wasn't eligible for financing on his own and that I was there for either a co-sign or to buy it outright in my name and financing. His first move was to try and run my credit. I can't blame him... why negotiate price if he doesn't know if I can get it. And he wanted to run just my credit, not B's and mine together to see if we could get it with me just as a cosigner. When B asked him about why he couldn't try it with him on it first, the salesman gave some BS about it being an illegal straw man sale if we tried to get financed together, then ended up getting financed with just me.
Bull Shit. He's seen B's credit and knows that our best option is with a fresh sheet of paper and only my name on it. He doesn't want to run an attempt with both of us, get it turned down, then run it again with just my name. so we blew through that quickly and he agreed to run our credit together. As he started to ready the paperwork, B stood up again (figuratively... he was sitting this entire time) and said we needed to talk about price first. B and I knew that if he wasn't going to come down to $14,500 out the door, that it wasn't worth the hit on my credit to even have it checked.
The salesman's first offer was sticker price. They had just raised it from $14,454 to $14,500 and he 'generously' said he'd offer the previous price. A whole $6 off. B offered $14,500 OTD. The salesman put that price down on his price sheet, and had B sign it as if he were agreeing to it. B hadn't seen that tactic before, but went with it. If it's ever done to you, don't worry about it. You're not legally agreeing to anything. He came back with an offer of $15,000 out the door. Now, maybe if it would have been handled differently, we'd have driven away in the car. Not at that price, but we'd have been more polite and agreed to a higher price. I know B was willing to put up more cash to compensate, but the financier (finance manager, money dude... whatever his title was) had taken a thick black Sharpie, crossed out the $14,500 offer and written in print large enough to go across the entire page $15,000 OTD! And yes, he added the exclamation point. So B, to demonstrate that we were still negotiating but that we didn't appreciate the implied 'fuck you' from the Sharpie, took one of the salesman's red permanent markers, crossed out the $15,000 and wrote $14,750 OTD under it.
I guess everybody got pissed as he came back and said that the $15,000 was their final offer. The look on his face as B and I stood up was priceless.
So, where are we now? Well, I figured that if B was fine with a full size sedan that we shouldn't just limit ourselves to General Motors cars. Yes, B was most comfortable with Chevy and accepted Buick, but he had also liked that Chrysler 300 he had looked at for $6,500. So I found 12 other full size sedans in 2 towns from 9 different dealerships. They included another Buick LaCrosse, a Dodge Charger, several Chevy Impalas, a few Chrysler 300s, and a handful of Ford Tauruses. They should all meet B's size requirement with only the Taurus needing to be seen in person and evaluated. They all had B's requirements of under $15,000, under 80,000 miles, had push button start, had remote start, and had heated seats.
Honestly, any of these should be acceptable. With a little mroe thought, we brought down the price to anything under $14,000. If it was hard to get them to negotiate from $14,500, why bother with it when we need to get a car today. So we pared the list down to 8 acceptable cars. We're going to head out soon and see what we can do. I'm going to try and convince B that we should hit up our local dealership one more time, show him our list of other cars, explain that we were not baiting him or playing some long game. Explain that we're buying a car TODAY and that if he can move that $250 more to $14,750 he gets our money. If he can't, it goes to someone else.
I'll let you know how it all goes in the conclusion.
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