Recommend an Industry Expert - You can recommend an "expert in the field" below. An industry expert is anyone you feel would be well qualified to answer this question and publicly accepts inquiries on this subject. If you are an industry expert and you are willing to answer our user's inquiries, you can enter your contact information below.

The most important thing in order to be able to negotiate with the car dealer is to have a good and thorough knowledge about the cars under consideration. With knowledge and expertise, one can formulate out the price one should pay for a particular vehicle. Once the minimum and maximum range of cost is decided, the person should first ask the dealer his demand, tell his own value and then be firm on whatever value he quotes to the car dealer. Jack Hamilton

This answer closely relates to:

Be very firm. Keep thinking it's just a car and there are thousands of them available. Don't get caught up thinking that you HAVE to have that one car. I just bought a car that was selling at a dealership for 6999.00 and it was on sale for 5999.00 rock bottom price. I got it for 5200 cash including tax and license. They wanted more but I held to my guns and said 5200 thats it. They said we need at least another 100.00 and I told them " thanks but thats all I had to spend and I even told them don't sell it to me I'm sure you can get more for it from someone else and I started to walk away. I got half way to my car and the salesman said hey how about you meet me halfway and kick in another 50.00. I said thanks but 5200 is all I have to spend-have a nice day and thanks for your time, I appreciate all you've done for me to try and make this deal. He said so for 50 bucks more your going to walk away and I said yup I dont have the 50.00 He then said ok lets do it 5200.00 out the door. And when I was just about ready to sign the contract with pen in hand I stopped and said, one more thing, I never buy a car without a full tank of gas. I didnt sign the contract untill they agreed to do it. Guess what? They filled it up. That just shows me if their willing to go that little extra to get a good customer that will pass it on to other folks of how good of a dealership they are. I got the car below wholesale from a dealership. The blue book value retail was 8300.00. So be firm and don't fall in love with the car untill it's in your driveway. But always be kind and treat them with dignity as long as they do the same to you.

5 It's a form of price discrimination. The salesman gauges what you are willing to pay during the negotiations and comes up with a price. The discrimination is based on his assessment of how much you can pay. Some other potential customer would get a different price based on a different assessment of willingness or ability to pay.

YES. And if they wont LEAVE. Buying a car is easy. Not getting ripped off is hard. If you want to buy a car you want to do it in steps. NEVER EVER give the dealership your SS# untill you have a deal set in stone. And NEVER tell the dealership how much you owe on your trade. EVERTHING is negotiable EVERYTHING 1. Make the dealership go at YOUR pace, not thiers. If you feel you are going to fast, TELL not ask the sales person to go away for a minute so you can think or talk to your spouce. And gather your thoughts or wits. The dealerships job is to confuse, bully, and push you into the sale so you wont think about the cost or how much your going to end up paying. 2. Negotiate the price of the car. Before you discuss anything else, you want to talk about the price of the car you want to buy. Because if the dealership wont playball on the price, there is no reason to talk about anything else. ASK for the invoice. If they say no, leave! If they show it to you, you now know what they bought the car for. Thats what an invoice is... The price that the dealership bought the car from ford. REBATES ARE NOT DISCOUNTS. Negotiating the price of the car has NOTHING to do with rebates. If the car costs 23K and the invioce says 20K you want to get the car for as close to 20K as you can. NOW if the car has foe example a 2K rebate, you TELL the dealership you want the reabte taken off of the price you NEGOTIATED. So if you got the car negotiated down to 20K and you take off the 2K rebate, the car is now 18K so that is a COMBINED discount of $5,000. And that is VERY good 3. NEGOTIATING the value of your trade Yes, you can negotiate the value of your trade. Not only is the dealership trying to make you pay top dollar for the new car, they are trying to make you give them your old car FOR AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE. Do research, check out KBB.com, NADA.com, EDMUNDS.com. Find out what your car is ACTUALLY worth. These sites will give you a trade in value, a private party value, and a retail value. If you can get your car traded in for between the trade in value and the private party value, then your doing ok. BE HONEST when you value your car. ONLY 2% of all vehicles in the U.S. fall into the "exellent" catagory. These sites will tell you what condition your car is in. 4. The interest rate. You dont want to give the dealership your SS# until you have gotten this far. Because there is NO REASON to. Because untill you have a price on the new car, and a price on your trade in that you are happy with, there isnt a reason to give that info out to the car dealer. NOW BEFORE YOU GO TO THE DEALER, visit your local bank and ask them what kind of rate you qualify for, and what your scores are. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. Because if your bank tells you that you have exellent credit, then you do. And they will usually offer you the best rate you qualify for, because the bank want to keep your business, and they want you to finance through them. this allows you to have a starting point when negotiating interest rates with the car dealer. YES I SAID NEGOITATING THE RATE. If the bank offers you a 5%, then that is your starting place. It ok to tell the dealer that you have financing through your bank. NEVER tell themn what % it is. MAKE THEM WORK TO BEAT IT, because you might just get lucky and get a super low rate through them that you would never have known was there otherwise. If they beat it GREAT, if they cant, you still have a very fair rate through your bank. 5. The down payment. NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER tell the dealer you have ANY money to put down until you have come this far. If you do, your down payment will magically disapear into one fake thing or another. You never mention any money down untill you have the price set, the trade value set, and the interest rate and loan length set. If you do everything right, here's what happens as an example: Original price of the car: $23,000 Negotiated price: $20,000 Negotiated price with rebates: $18,000 Original trade value: $1,000 Negotiated trade value: $1,750 Original interest rate: 7% Negotiated interest rate: 3.5% Money down: $2,000 -The results- Original deal: $22,000 at 7% Negotiated deal: $14,250 at 3.5% If you're smart and calm you can work wonders with buying cars.

This answer closely relates to:

If your daughter is old enough to live in another state, then she's old enough to negotiate a price on a car. You sound like you are trying to manage a baby instead of an independent young woman. That being said, I still think you can do it, if you want. Just manage the transaction over the internet yourself. Send her out for test drives. She lets you know what she likes, and the prices. You email the internet desk at the dealer and negotiate over the internet. Dealers hate that because people tend to get the best price over the net. But, most will do it. And, you dont have to pay anyone to do it on your behalf, which generally will cost you several hundred dollars or more.

This advice will save you tons of money...go to consumerreports.org, and purchase a new car buying report. For $14, you will get a detailed report illustrating all applicable rebates to the car you've selected, including manufacturere to dealer rebates. It will show you EXACTLY how much the dealer paid for your car, and how to negotiate UP from that price. The dealer wants you to negotiate DOWN from a fictitious "MSRP" or "invoice". Don't fall for this. Good luck.

the more money you have upfront the better chances you have to negotiate, you also need to find the invoice of the car so you know how much the dealer paid for it

Typically if the are requiring $1,500 down, that figure would actually come from the lender. If your 'debt-to-income' or 'loan-to-value' ratios are not within the guidelines, they would require a down payment to put your application where it needs to be. One thing I would suggest is to see if your employer is a supplier to Ford. Most people are unaware of the savings available if you qualify. Employees of Walgreen's for instance, probably don't know they can get a supplier price on a new Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, and so on. If you want to email me your employer, I can see if you qualify. Your case does sound like a 'debt-to-income' issue, unless you are trading in a vehicle. Good luck and you can email me through Yahoo if you have questions.

The answer should be both b and d. Dealers have a cost, and a markup for each car. This cost is not generally published, but can be found on the Internet. If there is a dealer invoice listed on the price sheet of the car, the actual cost to the dealership is usually at least 4% below this amount. Therefore, the invoice price has a margin of at least 4%. Now you then have the sticker price. This is the price that is assumed to be what the general public is willing to pay for this item. It is a basis for negotiation, allowing the dealer to "make the first offer" without actually making an offer. The first 4% of the markup is reserved for dealer profit, and the rest, if any, of the markup is split between the dealership and the salesman on a percentage that varies from dealer to dealer. This arrangement came about based, among other things, the traditional sales model of wagons. Barter and negotiation was much more common 150 years ago, and a good salesman could maximise the return to the business owner on his goods. In areas that have "family car dealerships," the number of competing dealers tends to fall off, as these dealers have a "Wal-Mart" model of pricing. What you see is what you pay. As low as price as possible, but no negotiation. In areas where all the dealerships use the negotiation model for sales, they tend to "breed like rabbits."

even if a dealer sales a car for invoice-they usually make 2-3% of sell price in holdback.most $ now is made in the back so be wary of the financing after agreeing on price.

Impossible to determine from the information provided.