Saved THOUSANDS. How to Negotiate NEW Car Deals in 2025.

[00:00] I just bought this Atlas on December 31st, just rolled in a couple of days ago. The sticker price was 46,843 and I paid just over $36,000 and I'm going to show you how to get

[00:12] the best deal on a new car, especially right now, going into 2025. And it's a pretty low haggle, low negotiation. It's a very smooth process. This might sound weird, but the first thing that I do

[00:25] is I set up an email account dedicated to contact dealers and I also have a Google voice number. I don't use my personal cell phone or my personal email. It's just nice not to get the spam. Just wanted to throw that in there before we start. Now here's an example that I actually did in

[00:39] March of this year. So this is a 2023 Ford F-150 XL 4WD drive. I had reached out to a dealership. I asked them what the best price was that they could give me on this truck. The MSRP was 51,000. 45,849

[00:54] was the best price. I said hi Pamela, I might consider that if it's 42,000 but I think it's still too much for a 2023 XL. Let me know if this is possible or not. Remember, you won't get the price if you don't ask for it. You have to ask. So just in a couple of minutes she responds back and says here are

[01:09] the numbers will get you 43,000. And here's a breakdown of the sales sheet that they sent me just to sort of prove that just with a little email back and forth and a little effort on your part, think about it. The worst they can do is say no. As long as you're respectful and you're really

[01:26] sticking to your guns on a price that you think it's worth, but what if they say yes? You just save thousands of dollars. Okay, the first tip and this is especially important this time of year is to look for previous model years that are discounted. You'll see the 2025 here is 3.9%. You don't

[01:43] get as good a rate and it's $2,000 customer bonus cash instead of $3,500. So you're always going to get a better deal on the left over 2024's in this case during early 2025. So whether you're shopping

[01:56] at the end of the year or the beginning of the year, the first thing you want to do is find motivated sellers and the way you can tell their motivation is by looking at prices who's already discounting the prices more. An easy way to find this information is a website like cars.com or auto trader.com

[02:12] that allows multiple dealers in your area to compete on price. And you'll find sometimes a lot better pricing through these websites than you will on their own website. So here's a quick search within 50 miles of where I live. And this is the exact vehicle that I ended up purchasing with the same

[02:28] trim level. This is actually the dealership that I purchased it from Greeley, Nissan, Greeley, Volkswagen. Their price on cars.com is $40,912. And you'll remember from the beginning of this video,

[02:40] I told you that I got it for right over just over $36,000, which is a much better deal than what you see here. And I'm going to walk you through how I went about doing that. And I know some of my viewers will say, well, it's a Volkswagen. Of course, it's going to be a good deal. Well, you might

[02:53] actually find this interesting. Check out the transmission. It says Japan. And there are multiple sources including the car care nut that say that this is actually an ACE and 8 speed transmission. So it's

[03:05] a Toyota transmission in this atlas. You get the nice Toyota quality without the Toyota tax. You'll also notice some 2024s and 2025s listed here. They're a little bit higher priced, but I knew that

[03:17] I wasn't going to get nearly as good a deal on a 2025. The next thing you want to do is find the true market value of the car or invoice price if you can find that. Now, the first thing you can do is email or call the dealer and ask them for the invoice price, although this isn't a bulletproof

[03:32] method. They might not be truthful about what the invoice is. The second and a little bit easier thing where you don't have to communicate with the dealer yet is to go to Edmonds.com. Click on new cars for sale at the top, and then you're going to select the trim that you're interested in here

[03:49] and the year. Once you've done that, click find best price. Now, you want to get the specifications of the vehicle you're looking at, very similar to what you're looking at on Edmonds to get some idea of what the price should be. You'll choose the trim, you'll add options, and then calculate the price.

[04:05] And it'll give you an Edmonds suggested price, which is a little bit higher than what you saw them listed for. Now, you remember my invoice from earlier. So, this is pretty close to the invoice, $46,923. Edmonds suggests I pay $43,632. You've seen the dealerships listing them for $40,000,

[04:23] $41,000. That's because in this scenario, the Volkswagen Atlas, they have stock. It's not in high demand. This $43,632 is before the $3,500 discount from Volkswagen. So, Edmonds is pretty close to

[04:39] probably the best deals that I've seen if you sort by price. They're always fairly close to that. They're probably not a great indicator of invoice, but they're getting close. So, $43,632 is my

[04:52] starting point, my price for starting negotiations and hopefully bringing that down. The next thing I do is I determine what my trade value is if I have a trade-in. In my experience, some of the best

[05:06] offers you can get are from KBB.com and their instant cash offer. It seems to be a little bit higher than Carvana and CarMax, just slightly higher and slightly higher from what some dealers will give me in person even. The nice thing about KBB.com is they will tell you the dealerships that participate in

[05:23] the cash offer program, which means if you take this cash offer from KBB.com to a dealership, you don't have to necessarily haggle too much on the trade-in value. I just traded in my car and

[05:36] dealerships only wanted to pay me $2,000 or $3,000 less than what KBB instant cash offer was. The next thing you want to do is narrow down the type of dealer you want to work with. If you see a dealer like this, this is a shop dealer in our Denver area and they have a one price, one person,

[05:52] one hour commitment, but they don't really allow haggling on any of their vehicles new or used. You can go that route if they have a decent price on the vehicle and you just you want to do no haggling and you get in, get out quick and your time is worth more than the couple thousand dollars you might

[06:07] save in haggling. This is the style of dealer that you want to stick to. Here's another example auto nation, enjoy one low no haggle price. Now their prices aren't always going to be the lowest but they do tend to start out a little lower than some dealership. If you see language like this,

[06:21] you're probably not going to be able to haggle so keep that in mind. The next step is to call the dealership. So I called them to verify a couple things. You're going to verify the price is the price, verify dealer handling, verify any other fees before you move forward. So it just depends on

[06:36] the dealership and how they list the values to you. There were a couple of key things that I noticed when talking to Greeley Nissan and Volkswagen. One was that sticker that you see on the image there. It says six year 100,000 mile powertrain warranty. That's included for free. But that tells me

[06:53] something a little bit about the psychology of this deal is that they are more motivated to push these vehicles than some of the other dealers. The second thing I noticed when I talked to this dealership compared to other dealers. The other dealers didn't seem quite as motivated to get me into the dealership.

[07:07] They sort of had a price and it sounded like they had other people interested on the lower price models. This dealership, however, when I talk to them on the phone, I heard things like if you come in today, we'll give you the best deal you can get. We'll beat anybody's deal. I promise you,

[07:22] we can beat anybody's deal. So listen for language like that. It's not necessarily desperation, but much more motivated sellers tend to discount their cars more and it's a much easier process.

[07:34] Now, the next step is to go test drive the car. You want to make sure you actually like this car before you commit to anything or even bother negotiating at that point. Now, the next thing you can do just before negotiating with them is to ask for the outdoor price, but in doing so,

[07:49] say, hey, give me your best price on this vehicle and all of the fees listed. You want to see the dealer in handling fee, the taxes, registration fees, all those things listed, just so there's no surprises

[08:01] at the end. And this gives you some idea of what their bottom dollar or just the base vehicle price is. Now, in my scenario, they started out just over $40,000. They came back with an initial offer for $38,700. So I got a couple thousand dollars off just for asking for their lowest price

[08:20] and the outdoor price. Remember, the lower price you get up front means less depreciation when you go to trade that vehicle in two, three, four years down the road. Here's a nice little table for you. You know, the the first year depreciation is always the largest 20% second years, 15% third

[08:35] second and third years, 12%. So if you can get $3,000 or $5,000 off in that initial transaction, just think of it as a much bigger benefit to you later on. And keep in mind, it is going to vary

[08:49] depending on the model and trim and year that you're looking at. Here's an example of a 2024 Toyota Grand Highlander XLE. This is sort of a comparable vehicle to the Atlas. So you'll see a lot of Toyota

[09:01] lots have a lot fewer vehicles and the average time on lot is only 30 days. So when I call these Toyota dealers and I ask for their lowest price, they pretty much give me the price here that's on the

[09:14] website, the MSRP. I might be able to negotiate a little bit, but very little wiggle room with Toyota because their stock is so much lower. So it just depends on supply and demand. And on the flip side of

[09:26] that, let's take the Nissan Pathfinder for example, there are a ton of Pathfinders available at Nissan dealerships. Nissan also has better financing rates, typically and better rebates. So you're

[09:38] getting a much bigger discount. Now it's not a Toyota. It's not going to hold value like a Toyota, but it's still a very good vehicle. They're in a similar situation as Volkswagen with lots of stock,

[09:50] left over 2024s, and good manufacturing rebates and incentives. So they're willing to deal with you a lot faster than a Toyota dealership. Now it's decision time for you. Do you want to negotiate more? Or are you happy with this price? This started out at 41-140. They got it down to 38,700,

[10:08] but I wanted a little more off. I just wanted to see if they could do more. I asked them. I said, is that the best price you can do? Can you take a little more off? At this point, they're either going to ask you what the price is that you're looking for and you need to have something in your head

[10:22] and ready to go. Something to give them that you're willing to commit to and you got to be ready to pay that price. You're not ready to pay that price. Tell them you're just probably going to think about it. The salesman actually told me that they couldn't do any more off the vehicle. It was already a good

[10:36] deal. I actually did think it was a decent deal, but I wanted to push them a little further. So this is your last ace in the hole. And this is where you can get up and prepare to leave the dealership. I'm not saying you have to leave, but this is where the most leverage comes in in a car dealer.

[10:52] If they are desperate or motivated to sell, they will not let you leave or they won't want you to leave the dealership. So I shook the salesman's hand and I said, thank you for helping me and it was a great experience. And we'll think about it. I never said yes or no. It was a little more than we wanted to

[11:08] spend on the car at that moment. So we got up and started to walk out. Of course, this is a tactic that they all use. The sales manager will then come up and usually try to sort of ambush you before you leave if they are motivated to sell. And he said, hey, why are you leaving? What can I do for

[11:24] you? And that's when they start asking what the price is that you might be interested in. I asked them to take another $1,500 off. And then I would be interested in doing the deal. He held his hand out and said, would you do it tonight? I said, sure. And I was ready to buy. So we got another $1,500 off.

[11:42] What was already a decent deal at least considering the dealerships around me. Now, had he not agreed to that? I would have been willing to walk out and I would tell them before leaving. Just give me a call. If you guys change your mind, we're going to drive back to wherever we came from. A lot of

[11:57] the time dealers will let you walk out the door, get in your car. And sometimes they will call minutes later or sometimes hours later. They'll be texting you or calling you. But it's a really simple way and a cordial way in this entire interaction. You're being nice. You're being respectful. And you want to be

[12:14] likable as much as possible. You don't want to go in and say, I've done a million car dealers. You guys don't know what you're talking about. They're not going to want to work with you and they're not going to want to give you the best deal. Think about it. If you sort of befriend them, you're really nice.

[12:27] You're really respectful. And you build a little bit of rapport with them. When you go to leave, they actually don't want you to leave because you're a nice person and a lot of people aren't that nice. So if you're nice, respectful, but you hold the line on what price you really want to pay,

[12:43] you'll get a better deal than people that are rude and obnoxious. One thing that I forgot to mention, I actually did a comparison of insurance costs on the vehicle that I had versus some new vehicles. And they vary drastically depending on the make and model. For instance, if I looked at a 2022

[13:00] Nissan Pathfinder, that actually cost me more to ensure than a brand new VW Atlas. Most insurance companies make it very easy for you to log into their website, plug in a VIN and compare policies

[13:12] and see which one is higher. Just to give you an example, I traded in a 2020 Tesla Model 3. So five-year-old vehicle and that costs more to ensure than this brand new 2024 Volkswagen Atlas

[13:28] Big SUV. So there's a lot of variation in insurance costs for various reasons. It's just another big portion of your monthly cost. So keep that in mind when you're purchasing a vehicle.

[13:40] Hopefully this helps you out. Thanks for watching. Till next time.