WTF does that mean?
In general, Florida dealers are tough to deal with. You need to be patient and educated as well as polite but firm. You also have to accept the high dealer fee, they never move on that one. You have to compare that to the cost of travelling out of state to pick up and return a vehicle back home. Georgia, especially in the Atlanta area seems the closest and most competitive.
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In my mind dealers run a cartel a la Escobar to agree on prices and force you down the captive financing option. A broker here got me a dream deal on a Toyota pickup truck. It was out of state and with US Bank that raised eyebrows and irate comments from Yakuza Southeast Toyoya dealers that reached out after I closed the deal.
In south FL most Toyota, Honda and Mercedes dealers are owned by Auto-nation, basically a cartel, so no competition.
You all need to chill with the conspiracy theories. I used to work at Autonation corporate and the opposite is actually true. Each store is independently operated with the GM responsible for the profit and loss of the store. Stores frequently compete against each other they do not collude on pricing. Why don’t you do some leg work and actually get pricing from multiple Autonation dealers and you’ll see then pricing is different.
The biggest reason deals are bad in South Florida is dealerships refuse to do deals at buy rate money factor and the doc fee is very high.
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Florida doesn’t have any more disposable income than any other area. Mostly, I think it comes down to the ‘keeping up with the Jones’. People down here, less advantaged people, want to feel like they’ve ‘made it’ and others want to ‘keep up’. Leasing allows someone to drive a stripped 5 series for the price of buying a loaded 3 series or leasing a 3 series for the cost of buying a Corolla. And dealers know this. I honestly think they’d rather sell 1 vehicle at full MSRP than 10 discounted.
Our last 3 purchases were very good deals, a Tucson, CR-V and Rav4. My RC350 F-Sport in an incredible lease.
FL Salesperson here.
Mix of a lot of things:
-Uneducated buyers
-Old people with money to burn
-REALLY UNEDUCATED BUYERS
Make sure you do your research and are prepared to negotiate. You can get something leasehackr worthy.
Another thing is trying to replicate deals you see here. Each deal is different and 99% of the deals cannot or will not be replicated.
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I agree Utah is pathetic for leasing.
I’m not @ilovecheapleases but how I interpret is: we acquired Florida as a bad debt write-off from Spain, so the penance is shopping local often means getting gouged local (for all the reasons others mentioned)
Not that different than when I travel there, one reason FL is an income tax-free state is all the tax we pay on hotels, rental cars, gate fees when we visit. I can’t remember anyplace I’ve visited where all three are so high (Heathrow seems to be the highest for just airport taxes but not the rest).
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There are many states that have all these same higher taxes in other areas as well as high state income tax. Such as New York.
At least we don’t gouge our residents as much and count on the tourism industry to off set costs.people can choose to not come visit here if they feel the costs are to high.
Orlando is around 15% on Hotels. New York and Vegas is around the same.
While I am not a fan of any taxes I much prefer consumption taxes over income taxes. You can choose to consume what you would like and pay those requisite taxes. You have no choice on income tax.
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Agree…I have recently dealt with about 15 BMW and Benz dealers throughout Florida from Tallahassee to Miami and the differences are the marked up MFs, high Acquisition Fees and high Dealer fees. I am currently working two dealers from other states. They have offered me same % off the car with base MF and reasonable fees.
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yea I had to buy out of state and ship it. South florida dealers stink.
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South Florida dealers give some of the worse lease offers, and whether it’s because they have an agreement or simply know we’re not driving a couple hundred miles to the competition, they don’t budge, so call around to the dealerships up north, and don’t be afraid to politely let them know what you know about the price (most dealerships let you search their inventory online, so you can look at the different sale prices), rebates, incentives, residual value. I just got a 2021 Mazda CX-5, FWD, preferred package, $0 down sign and drive for 36 mo/ 10 k, for $285 per month from a dealer in Orlando.
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