What else is in your driveway? Family SUV considerations

May want to wait until you get to SoCal.

Or shop with CarMax, since they'll ship cars to you from other areas, and you can usually see the CarFax and confirm where they lived prior by looking at where it was registered yearly.

You won't get the same steals and deals as you'll find on CL, OfferUp, or FB Marketplace, but you also won't pay the same typical bloated dealership pricing, CarMax is usually pretty reasonable. It's where we picked up our 20202 Highlander hybrid Limited from Texas at ~$42k with 10k miles, when local dealerships were selling new 2022 models closer to $60k and expecting us to fork out $50k-$55k for a 2019 hybrid. If i were up north, I'd think of the 10%-15% increase in private party price to be worth the added cost of buying from CarMax.

 

Outback

 

Our families fleet SUV wise:

2013 Lexus RX350 FWD
2013 Lexus RX350 AWD
2017 Lexus RX350 FWD

I'm flirting with selling the 2013 FWD and getting a GX for the wife to drive but she says it's "too tall". Surprisingly enough the 2017 RX350 motor needed replacement at around 85k miles. It started rattling and was taken to Lexus for inspection. They drained the oil and found metal shavings. It was purchased certified pre-owned through a Lexus dealer and had a good maintenance history. Thankfully Lexus footed the almost $18,000 bill for a new motor. Neither the Lexus dealer doing the repair nor the dealership that sold it had seen one of these motors fail like this before. Our two 2013's are between 118k-125k and are solid performers.

 

RX350 are great cars, we have 3 also. My wife has a 2007 RX350 with 347k on it. My dad has 2013 RX350 AWD with 120k. We also have a 2008 with around 150k. We don't drive this one much but it's too nice to sell.