Trade in values (of non-Leafs)

[alamojo]

I'm looking into leasing an SV in the Dallas TX area, and am working with McKinney Nissan.

Via email I sent them my current car's VIN, a 2010 Jeep Liberty in very good condition.

Kelly Blue Book says it's worth $17K, they offered me $15K, sight unseen.

Is that differential surprising? I haven't tried to press them on it yet.

-Alan

 

[RonDawg]

On trade-ins especially, the dealer is always going to try to "low ball" you. Also don't rely solely on KBB; I find that in most instances that their values are somewhat overinflated. Also try other sources such as Edmunds and NADA.

Is there a CarMax near you? They have a service in which they will appraise your car and offer you money for it; they give you a written offer and you have 7 days to act upon it. Many people take the written offer and the car to another dealer as a negotiating tactic. When it came time to sell my father's car (due to his doctor's orders to discontinue driving), that written offer got us a extra $1000 over the dealer's initial offer to buy the car, and $500 over CarMax's offer.

Especially with leases I recommend not trading in, but selling the car as a separate transaction, even if you have to go somewhere else like CarMax. It's too easy to make you think you got a great trade in but then they make it up some other way that is buried deep in the lease contract. The exception would be if your state only taxes the difference in value between the new car and the trade-in (which is not the case where I am).

 

[redLEAF]

The exception would be if your state only taxes the difference in value between the new car and the trade-in (which is not the case where I am).

+1 -- especially in higher sales tax states (like my berated IL); I've used the Carmax appraisal twice now on two separate transactions -- one for a trade on the our LEAF and more recently another for my trip car. Dealer's can make much more money on your used trade-in versus the new car they're selling you if its in decent shape. In the higher tax states where they do only tax you on the difference it could end up being enough to simply turn it in -- it should be pointed out that Carmax does give you wholesale at auction pricing but at least you have a reference in hand that the dealer can't ignore -- some dealer's will advertise that they'll beat the Carmax offer by $500 but of course they may make that up by not discounting off much from MSRP on the new car --- as always it's a numbers game. I've used True Car for average selling price on the new car and edmunds on used car values and figure from there the target out of pocket I'm willing to pay --- if the dealer comes within a $1K or so, then I might try to get a few more spiffs (like free floor mats, etc.) thrown in but your time is worth money too so you need to determine how far to go. In the early days, we weren't getting much if anything of a discount off MSRP off the LEAF, not so these days so both sides of the transaction requires a bit of research ... lastly, seem to recall that TX is like IL in that they tax you on the entire value of the car for leasing, not just the 'value' of the lease payments so you'll need to factor that in; would imagine just like IL that the sales tax is less the amount of the trade but not being from there can't tell you