A Friday Rant: I want to buy, I just can't

I am in GA. Bought in October under list. Dealer has consistently had a few units listed under MSRP on the ground. Checked yesterday has 2. You get there and they try some BS accessory padding but willing to negotiate some of it out. If your goal is to make a dealer cry uncle and get the absolute deal of century not your market

My take on shopping Ram and Toyo last fall was there are dealers that are not into the online advertising circus games. They prefer you to go to their website or contact them directly. There are the dealers in towns just big enough to have a dealer who run off of local sales to repeat customer. The most honest offers I got during my search were from the Toyo dealer in a town I used to live in a decade ago and bought a Lexus from, and a Ram dealer in my home town I did not know even existed until I drove by it attending a funeral. The big city dealers have legions of big salary job people who will pay above list. They are all games.

 

"I want to buy but just can't"

We know the whole idea behind raising interest rates - is to slow demand.
From what I can see everyone is still in buy mode - and not just for vehicles.
Hell, I even bought stuff during the holidays - supplies caught up on some goods.
So deals too good to pass up. C'mon 70" TV at 40% off ?
So the current vehicle buying situation has a ways to go still.
The lag in reaction to the interest rates (in process) , and the manufacturers getting back to normal.
It's a complicated process with all those parts from "around the world"

I live in the country and saw my first 22/23 ? TRD Solar Pro parked with snow falling at a coffee shop I was driving by.
Hard to miss as it was dusk and "all" its lights were on. I think all the lights were on?
Yeah, It looked pretty cool parked there from the front in orange.
It was shouting "look at me"

Definitely not for Mr. Incognito.

 

my local dealer wants over 10% APR for excellent credit. No Thanks. Is this the norm everywhere right now? I will not trade my 2021 just looking for my wife.

 

in Canada the modern definition 2023 of old people is those (with a memory still) that took out loans at fixed rates for the longest terms - when they were handing out free money.

To clarify
Driving home on highway doing 80kms, it was parked at a well lit mom/pop truckers coffee shop

Well, you know....
If they can no longer hear you coming in a TRD PR0 - they sure as hell better see you - right?

 

Too many people pay it. They’ll complain about it afterward, sure, but they still pay it. The dealers don’t care as long as it is still being paid.

I hate the current auto market. I have zero interest in anything that is always-connected, tracking where I go and how fast I get there, creating a marketing profile that is sold to 3rd parties. My wife needed a new vehicle, so I bought a 14-year-old 200 series in cash. Lol.

Thankfully, my truck, which was built in Sept ‘20, rolled off the line just before the entire industry’s QC went to total crap. After seeing what is happening across the board with the automakers, I won’t be buying new for a very long time.

 

It's total BS but the reckoning is coming.

 

I already had a deposit down on an allocation so I knew exactly what to search for as far as the build on Costco's site. The truck I had reserved showed as available at the dealer through the site and Costco generated an authorization number with a page to print out. I took it to the dealer and no fuss was made. It was pretty easy. I don't know much about regional participation in this program unfortunately. I'm near Boise Idaho if you want to come out this way!

 

I paid under $330,000 for my detached home and have a mortgage rate under 3%. Reddit would consider me a boomer.















I'm 33.

Oh, and I paid MSRP for my truck. The cheap buggers wouldn't toss in so much as a bed mat though.

 

Is the reckoning actually coming? According to several automotive YouTube channels, buyers just need to wait 4-6 months for prices to fall or for Carvana to go bankrupt and flood the market with 100,000 overvalued used cars. It feels like we've been waiting 4-6 months for a few years now. And there always ends up being some excuse (usually supply chain issues) that prevents it from actually happening.

 

You are a Millennial.
Boomer years 1946-1964 .
I just made the Boomer cut by a couple years.
That makes me older than the internet which was born in 1983.
I had no mortgage, but I put one on at 1.68% fixed - just stupid free money.
and EQ bank is paying us a 3% daily rate on the money as we wait...
Waiting for Ontario prices to fall further and maybe help our "Millennial" son acquire a property.
But only if he stops calling me an old man.

 

Yeah, I know I'm a millennial. Based upon only knowing my mortgage rate and cost of home though, lots of people on reddit or other personal finance forums have assumed I'm a boomer. LOL. Apparently they don't realize that there's a Canada outside of Toronto and Vancouver where you can buy a house for under a million bucks and land a job paying better than minimum wage with no university degree.

I have to renew my mortgage in 2024. Hoping the rates fall back out of stratosphere by then.

 

The term "stratosphere" is relative.
I was paying 14% on a mortgage in 1990.
So I consider 5% normal. 8^0
Everyone has an opinion.
Mine is that certain goods services will remain high priced.
So inflation once it hits 3 or 4% will be sticky.
Oil is going up leading to higher Gas prices.
There is no more US SPR to draw from. US needs to to start refilling it now. Ukr war is escalating and China reopening.
All the US Fed and BOC care about is hitting 2% inflation.
If that is indeed true rates are going higher.
JMO

 

Exactly! I bought my '20 right in the middle of the BS as the writing was on the wall. Negotiated to $39K out the door. Barring a wreck I hope to keep it for a very long time. Until people stop paying stupid prices nothing will change. This will probably be the last new vehicle I will ever buy unless things get back to normal. I refuse to pay MSRP or higher for arguably a less quality controlled vehicle.

 

We have been in the Vancouver area for a long time and seen the craziness in real estate. If we were to start out today, we don't know how we could buy a property and still afford to eat! Northern Alberta and other areas certainly seem like the opportunity areas.

We are going to find that no one is working in the city because housing and transportation is too expensive so the areas become ghost towns with just a bunch of absentee owners tying to get a coffee at the recently closed coffee shop!

My sister bought a little house on a property about 45 mins from Regina for $11,000. Sure, out the way but a possibility.
My other sister bought a property in Prince Rupert on the water for $400k (a fixer upper).

Gas has been ridiculous out here and everything else is climbing.

The topic on the radio is now the cost of a dozen eggs!

 

Dealers make more the worse the APR they can talk you into. Some will require you to take the ripoff deal or they increase the price.

 

hm I’m not far from Boise. Did I read somewhere you used Edmark?

 

Correct! Edmark Toyota in Nampa.

 

Happened to me when I bought my truck. I entirely negotiated the price of the truck prior to going to the dealership, so that went smoothly enough. Got into the finance office and they told me that the only reason I got the price we negotiated was due to "special offers" that required me financing through them... At 6%... When interest rates were super low.

Said I'd take it if I could differ my first payment & refinanced the next day to a sub-3% rate through USAA.

That was my second & final Toyota I'll ever buy from that stealership.

 

I had to call about 8 dealers to get a Tundra at MSRP. Found one willing to go 1k under on a limited even. You just need to get on the phone and be willing to travel a little. To pick my truck up next week I have to fly to another state and do an 8 hour road trip back but its worth it.

 

I just bought mine new in DFW about 4k lower than MSRP

 

I'm on the way...

In all seriousness, did you order one or just go to dealership and pick off lot?

 

I find the hang up on "generations" to be completely silly. The only reason the distinction exists is because of marketing studies. It was all so companies would know how to better market products, and which products, to different demographics divided by various factors. Only one of those factors is "generation" because they can make general assumptions based on it. For example, each upcoming "generation" gets it's own buzz words and fads for advertising. Mega(insert product name), Extreme without the first E (Xtreme), (insert product name) 2000, or 2500, or whatever number is "futuristic" at the time, "military grade" or more recently everything is "tactical!" The kicker is that for it to be effective in marketing it only needs to appeal or be catchy to a decent size of the target audience, not all. Generalities and assumptions based on "generations" are fine for marketing applications, but utterly useless for everything else. Though, it has been another completely irrelevant metric that has been effectively implemented to sow division.

 

Called up there and told them what I wanted. They said they had two incoming limiteds hybrids optioned the way I wanted in two colors. I told them which one I preferred. They held it for me.

 

OK Boomer



Too easy, couldn't resist

 

Patience is a virtue here.
As people's 6 month allocations come in - alot of them are financing and finding they can't afford or just don't want to pay the increased payments due to the last 6 months rate increases. They let the allocation go. Dealer looks for new buyers - with these rates its a new market and discounts follow.

 

Maybe
But I have fraternal twin millennial's so am speaking from family experience.
As an example.
My kids prefer to put as little down as possible and leverage.
I was raised old school where debt was like cancer. So you try to owe nothing.
So even though they were raised with my mentality regarding money and debt - they chose to go the way of their peers and friends.
It took basically free mortgage money at 1.68% to make me go in debt.

 

my guess is we are going to see some incentives of some sort Feb 1 when the new ones hit

 

I had a similar experience happen to me. Last January I went to a dealer and the numbers made no sense. They basically had a “market adjustment” on their vehicles but instead of just raising the price, they added mandatory sprays for the exterior, interior etc for like $6,500. I walked right out in disgust (mind you, when I walked through the doors, I got a spiel about we don’t do market adjustments, xyz.) When I purchased my Tundra a couple weeks ago at a different dealership, it was the complete opposite experience. Never felt pressured, and while they wouldn’t come done on MSRP, they went up on trade in value significantly and I had them include runners (that I’m currently waiting for).

The only thing that sucked was the 7.7% interest rate (for perfect credit) and I hate having debt and owing banks more than I borrowed but understand it’s a part of life. I plan on having the truck paid off in a couple of months anyways

long story short, some dealerships and salespeople are awful, but others are pretty good.