Nobody pays the sticker price but how much(%) below the sticker should I offer. Ex. How much should I offer on the new car that has a sticker price of $20000?

17,600

What type of vehicle? There is going to be a lot less room to haggle on a Prius than on an F-150. Have you thought about using a buying service or checking with Consumer Reports? You can also look at Edmund's (www.edmunds.com) which will give you what they call the True Market Value (TMV) for the car which might be a good place to start.

funny, I am downsizing from a truck to a fully loaded civic. I have about 25% cash downpayment.

Good luck getting anything for your truck.

It really depends upon the market demand for the car you wish to purchase. The greater the demand, the more the dealer can charge you. You may want to check with Costco and see what price their buying service comes up with.

Has anyone purchased a new car through Costco? Would you recommend?

how do you buy a new car from costco? I dont think he will have any trouble getting into a corolla or a civic at the rate that they are making them.

I tried it about 2 years ago. What they do is send you to a dealer and a particular sales person who shows you the "Costco prices". I found the prices laughable. This was a Toyota dealer. Of course, the problem you have is that you don't know if those are really the Costco prices or not. I was shown some Xeroxed paper with COSTCO PRICING on top and some ridiculously high prices. Like that would be hard to fake. I ended up negotiating a much better price on my own.

Waste of freaking time.

One method I have used is to pay $15 or so for the consumer reports car report on a particular vehicle. They'll give you invoice prices and recommendations on offer prices, costs of all the options, etc.

One time after having the report in hand, I queried a dealer on a specific vehicle with the options I wanted. They came back with a price that had already beaten the "good deal" number on the Consumer Reports paperwork so I knew to take it... I guess the dealer was having a hard month :)

pgens Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> One time after having the report in hand, I
> queried a dealer on a specific vehicle with the
> options I wanted. They came back with a price
> that had already beaten the "good deal" number on
> the Consumer Reports paperwork so I knew to take
> it... I guess the dealer was having a hard month
> :)


This is the one variable that you just cannot predict, but right now I doubt that many dealers are seeing cars moving out the door at record pace, so you might find a good deal if you are buying a car that is otherwise not moving.

Dealerships have a lot of different internal incentive programs with the manufacturer related to volume and mix of cars sold which impact their inventory and rebates. A friend of mine is the finance manager at the Honda dealership in Hagerstown and he has seen Accords, Pilots and Ridgelines go for $2-4K under cost just so that the dealership could meet their units sold number for the month. The problem, however, is that this is really a crapshoot, but you might have better luck the last few days of the month given that the economy is where it is.