tropical36 wrote:
Bruce Brown wrote:
True. Years ago a friend of mine, who was the GM at a local car dealership, used to say "books don't sell cars, people do". He was right.
On the book price, I think you'll find NADA uses a formula to determine values as much, or more, than true market surveys. In the automotive world most dealers now use real-time auction information instead of NADA. I recently had a car evaluated; they used an app that read my VIN, they punched in my miles, then it did a search for similar vehicles with similar miles and gave a true up-to-date value. It was pretty interesting to me.
And how close to NADA low retail, was this figure and maybe what most interested you?
At the time it was surprisingly above NADA. Now fast forward 6 months and my daughter was looking to buy a car. I don't use the old one much so I thought I may offer it her to help with her down payment. It was a dealership I know and trust (a friend of mine is the owner), they punched specifics in and it came back much lower than NADA. The market had changed, obviously a fair amount.
In 2006 we bought a used Lincoln Aviator from the same dealer mentioned above. They made us a trade offer that was more than we were willing to pay. After a few days they called and accepted our offer. They said the market had dropped on that particular vehicle and they were going to lose money on it so they'd cut their loses now. Again, I know these guys well so I know it wasn't any of the typical dealership games. The market swings effect both consumers and dealers alike.
As with everything, markets have ebbs and flows. The real time stuff most are using today is the most accurate.
