Buying in cash?

Hey guys,
You all have helped out so much when I was looking to lease, and now I’m ready to buy.
I’m looking at buying a 2015 Chevy Volt from a local dealership, sticker price is $14,895 with 30k miles. A pretty good deal, IMO.
This is a half-electric vehicle that comes with a 100k mi warranty on the battery, which I’m happy about, and is pretty standard.
Realistically, how much could I get off the sticker if I’m paying the full price, in cash?
I’m thinking I will refuse to pay more than $13k, start off with an offer of $12k.
Would you guys recommend this? I like the idea of not having a car payment.

Also, are there any fees charged when purchasing a vehicle/ hidden fees that I should be aware of?

If you have any general comments about Chevy Volts, I’d like to hear them as well.
As always, Thank you

Paying cash doesn’t help your negotiations. They would rather you finance through them.

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Used cars depend all on your local market, you said it yourself that the asking price is already a good deal. Are there other examples of 2015 Volts that are going for $14k? Also keep in mind that paying in cash doesn’t get you the best deal since the bank pays the dealer a small fee when you finance.

13500…,

The last two cars I have bought I paid cash, the first one the finance guy just wanted me out of his office as quickly as possible so he could concentrate on customers that he could finance and sell warranties to. The second car the finance guy told me straight up I was wasting his time because he wasn’t going to make any money off of the transaction. Point is dealers make money in the finance office on warranties, insurance and financing, frequently they mark up interest rates to get a kick back so doing a cash deal will deprive them of that opportunity. Shopping for a used car is very different than new, you cannot establish x percent off like a new car. I would check fair market values on KBB, Edmunds and do a search on autotrader, if the price is competitive already you won’t likely have much to work with. I would probably push for 14k and see what they say, I seriously doubt 13k is doable on a car they are asking 15k for. Personally I never lowball and offer something like 12k if I think 13k is a good deal. I would do my research set a price your happy with based on the comparable and fair market data and simply tell them you researched the market and your best offer is X.

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Considering their RV, I’d think it should not be more than 10k. But what do I know…

Auction averages are about 12.5k for 2015 Volt with 30k.

Just like I said - I know nothing about it, just my gut told me no more than 10k for 3 years old 30k miles Volt. Especially when dealers take 2 years old V60 with 20k miles for 16k in trade-in :slightly_smiling_face:
But low is pretty close to my guess.

10k is more Nissan leaf territory

MMR is not a great data point to rely on to determine a fair used retail price point. You can expect to pay roughly 2500-3500 over MMR which includes auction fees, reconditioning costs and some profit.

Cargurus has an algorithm similar to vAuto which looks at asking prices across the whole inventory within a radius to determine what is a low/fair/high price is. I’d suggest checking clean retail at NADA, KBB, edmunds, auto trader and cargurus for price comparisons for your region.

I am leasing a 2017 Volt. I really like it. It is a nicer ride than my 2015 Spark EV, that I purchased.
I drive a hundred mi!is day, and it typically takes all of a whopping 0.33 gallons of gas (I can top off the charge at the top of the hill).

Alright guys, financing sounds like a good idea.
Could I get a better deal off ‘out-the-door’ price if I agree to like 6% interest, and then turn around and pay it off in like 3 months? There’s no maximum monthly payment, right? I’m not sure how that works.

If you are going to do that, you have to make sure there is no pre-payment penalty on the loan

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Completely agree, was using auction pricing to make the point that the 15k dealer asking price wasn’t that far out of the realm of reasonability since auction pricing was 12.5k.

And even though @Ursus and I both agree that 10k sounds a out right for a few year old plugin car, the market is a bit above it.

I don’t think it is legal anymore to have a prepayment penalty on an auto loan. I believe mortgages are the only mainstream loan that they can do that but it is always worth checking. I refinanced my Accord twice in 10 days to take advantage of better credit union rates. OP I would consider letting them finance you to see if you can sweeten the sales price a bit and then take advantage of the amazing interest rates that credit unions provide, do a 36 month refinance at probably 3% or less and you can have the cash in the bank, pay down higher interest debt and barely pay any interest on your car loan. Plenty of options for you and none are really the wrong answer except sticking with a higher interest loan a dealer arranges. That practice is coming to a halt because of the consumer law suits that have hit the industry hard for apparently targeting minorities with higher interest. Even with the millions paid Honda for example will still allow a dealer add 2% to a loan for the dealer arranging the loan.

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