Used Car Negotiation Filter

June 6, 2006 6:57 AM

In about 3 hours I am going to go and make a bid on this car. It is a 2004 Acura TL that is certified. What should I offer as an opening price? What is the max I should be willing to accept?
posted by aburd to technology (5 comments total)

Try plugging it into the Kelley Blue Book.
posted by exogenous at 7:15 AM on June 6, 2006

The Blue Book value is more than the asking price. So I don't really know where to start or what to aim for. I'm assuming I can knock them down a bit from the listed price, but I just don't know how much.
posted by aburd at 7:26 AM on June 6, 2006

If this is a dealership, you can rough it out that they markup about 20% or more. More so for luxury vehicles. You can base your bids on that.

I had a friend who phoned several dealers and pretended she wanted to sell this make, model, and year of a car she wanted. From several answers, she was able to ascertain what the going dealer market price was, and bid accordingly.

With a dealer, you have a lot more lattitude to lowball, since even if they feign being offended, at the end of the day, they still want ot sell you the car. Private sellers can get hurt feelings, or what have you, or take you for a blowhard, and just not deal with you.
posted by eurasian at 8:20 AM on June 6, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

You could buy a new one for about that much.
posted by curtm at 8:51 AM on June 6, 2006

Not certain where you are located, but I just looked seriously at a new TL in New England. New, the car lists at roughly 33K (invoice around 30K). Since the ad you linked to suggests an asking price of nearly 30K, I would guess you have plenty of room for negotiation.

I'm not an expert (in fact am notoriously bad at this), but the milegae shown in your ad also seems a bit high for a two year lease return vehicle (which I'm assuming this is).

Anyway... this is a long way of saying that if you're willing to go 29K, you might consider 31K for a new TL. Conversely, I don't know how realistic it is, but I wouldn't want to pay more than 25K even if the car is in great condition.
posted by dragonbay at 8:53 AM on June 6, 2006