As promised I will give me expertise in this forum. I've been a car salesman for 20 years and I'm very successful in my field. I've done everything from finance to sales management but found out I can help more people from the beginning as a salesman. I'm also very happy also because I make the same money with less hours and can help from the beginning because I'm the first person people meet when they visit my dealership with better knowledge than both the manager and finance department. My utltimate goal is to give back the knowledge that was given to me in the credit card forums here and to hopefully become a moderator and truely help everyone that wants to purchase an automobile. Most of the posts here seem to be about interest rates but remember that's only a part of the buying process. One must also consider their trade value and the actual price of the car they're considering all of which can be negotiated. Though the rate is important these other facors can influence the total price you pay over the life of the loan. Three important facts must be taken into consideration when negotiating a deal and could save you thousands of dollars. Most perople don't even know that the dealer can charge up to 3 points above the rate that the bank would normally offer you through the dealer and the difference is profit is given to the dealer from the bank over the course of the loan. Second, your appraisal on your trade may be used as profit for a dealer. Your car may have been appraised by a used car manage for $10,000 and the salesman says it's worth $8,000. Do you know that this is profit for the dealer because he can sell this car for 10k and offered you 8k? That's $2000 profit for the dealer!!! Finally Most dealers new and used increase the price of their cars thousands of dollars. If it's a new car they may have additional dealer markups and if used no one really knows the true price of a car because most used car dealers don't put a true price sticker on their cars and if they do it's an inflated price thousands of dollars above values you can get by searching online. The best remedy for this is to seach Kelly Blue Book values or NADA values and even then the dealers may have paid well below these. The best way to seach for cars new and used is to use online services such as cars.com or autotrader.com because dealers will post their best prices here because the sites are so competitive for both new and used cars.
The best advice I can give any car shopper is to remember there are 3 ways a dealership can make money and they are interest rate, your trade value, and the price of the car. Negotiating these three things can save you thousands of dollars over the course of your loan. There were many situations I've seen where people have paid $15,000 or more than they should have because they didn't research and that translates into $250 or more a month over a 5 year loan.
I'm here to help and I hope this post makes you more aware of the different ways dealerships profit of the unsuspecting consumer. If you need help with anything relating to an automobile purchase I'm here to help.
