Is there an easy way to search for a used car? Craiglsist doesn't have much results and going from dealer site to dealer site is driving me crazy. I'm looking for a 2016+ Yukon XL Denali 4x4. Ideally a late 2018 with the 10-speed transmission. I'm not quite ready to strike but trying to keep tabs on the market. Do dealers have a backdoor network to search for specific cars? And would that only be available to dealers?
Thanks K. Yeah, we (dealers) have access to several of the large national auction companies. The one I almost exclusively use sells around 2 million cars a month or so in a good year, IIRC. Most of the stuff they sell is from finance companies, etc. Are you a cash buyer?
Dealers are still holding for the same pricing since before the economy shut down. I think there's a reckoning coming in the used markets. It'll be a few months out, but there's a huge backlog of product to enter the wholesale side of the market. Here's Manheim numbers on a 2018 Yukon XL 4WD Denali (these are actual sales)
5/18/20 $45,250 35,688 4.6 8G/A White Regular West Coast Utah
5/14/20 $43,000 57,360 4.1 8G/A Silver Regular Southwest Texas Hobby
5/14/20 $52,200 8,835 3.8 8G/A Black Regular Midwest Detroit
5/6/20 $47,500 38,607 5.0 8G/A White Regular Southeast Nashville
4/15/20 $39,700 68,660 4.0 8G/A Gray Regular Southeast Nashville
3/24/20 $48,750 31,493 4.1 8G/A White Lease Southeast Statesville
There’s a misconception right now that dealers are hurting(which yeah we are) and we’ll just do stupid deals to try and drum up any business. Thing is that since the factories shut down, there’s no new inventory coming in. So why give away the store today only to have nothing to sell at any price tomorrow?
Cash absolutely doesn’t get you anywhere. Never declare that you’re paying cash until it’s time to start signing contracts. You have more leverage if they still think they have a chance to sell you their financing. There’s a whole thing I can go into on that, but I’ll save that for another time.
In situations like this where there is financing at a promotional rate, it’s almost always in lieu of additional discounts off the price. There are backend incentives that the manufacturer will give the dealer at times in order to push sales. Sometimes called “trunk money” but it effectively lowers the dealer’s cost on the vehicle so they can discount even more and still be profitable on the deal. GM is pretty transparent when it comes to these situations. Right now on a GMC Yukon, there’s the 0% for 84 financing incentive or if you don’t go that route, $3500 discount incentive. The dealer can discount whatever they want. You could still get say $5k off and still get the 0%, but if you bring in your own financing (which sure as hell isnt going to be 0%), they could now go $8500 off since GM is giving them $3500 on the backend.
Easiest way to tell that a financing offer is a “incentive” is you’ll always see something like “for well qualified buyers” in the fine print. Basically means you need super preferred credit. You’d be surprised how many people come in and don’t have a high enough score to get it.
There are also some situations where the best deal to be had is to finance. It will usually say “must finance with xxxx financial” (whatever that manufacturer’s finance arm is called), but you get a significant discount. The APR is always awful because that’s why they were able to offer the discount since they making money on the points. A few years ago, dealers had $30k in trunk money to move an Acura NSX. Was best to do a finance deal with Acura Financial Services, then just do a full payoff after a month.
+100 on Rob's comments. Spot on. With lower inventory, I don't expect much discount (dealer discounts) on new stuff...but I may be totally off here.
