First time hackr trying to get into a new 2018 Maxima. I’ve spent a lot of time on this site, Edmunds, CarGurus and TrueCar to find out the details I’ll need. Can somebody look over my math here before I go make a fool of myself at the dealer?
MSRP - $42,730
Sale Price - $36,250 (True Car says avg deal is $34,741)
MF - .00003 (36/15 I believe)
RV - 44%
Incentives (Non-taxed) - $4,300 Lease Cash, $1,000 Loyalty Cash, $1,000 Private Offer from True Car, and $200 AmEx Cardholder incentive
Using the calculator, I come up with $322 a month pre-tax. Iowa charges 5% tax on the sales price of the vehicle. I’m assuming I can either pay this up front or roll it in. I will also need to trade in my Kia Optima, though this will basically only pay off the note at its current value. If I roll it all into one payment with 0 drive off, my payment is $385 per month. (It won’t be quite this much because my trade in will lower the tax paid.
All of this to say, am I calculating this all right? Do I get to use all these incentives together? It seems a little too good to be true so before I get my hopes up I wanted to ask the experts.
Are you sure you can get that sales price before all those incentives? Truecar’s price probably has some incentives baked into it already. Also, do you have a Nissan that qualifies for loyalty cash?
Great question. I just looked on TrueCar for a breakdown of pricing. Sticker Price - $2,980 MSRP Discount and $3,500 Customer Cash = $36,250. It looks like TrueCar included the AmEx and Loyalty incentives in the $35,325 price.
So I guess new ‘Sales Price’ would be $36,250 plus the same incentives (however you want to look at it). I do qualify for Loyalty Cash because someone in my household has one.
From what I understand, Iowa does not charge a true ‘sales tax’ on vehicles. Instead, they charge a 5% ‘registration fee’ (yes, this is different than true vehicle registration fees) on the sales price of the vehicle. Because the incentives lower the ‘sold price’ they would therefore be untaxed. AT least that’s my current understanding.
Well my ‘great’ deal turned into an okay deal. Which is alright, at least now I know. If I could get them down to 13% off it’d still be a good deal all things considered.
Just thought I’d follow up - Dealer really wasn’t interested in leasing this. Only 1500 off sticker and payment around $550. Guess these just don’t lease very well.
