Payment info needed before price negotiation?

JALLEN4 wrote:

edatlanta wrote:
They are really wanting to know if you will be paying cash or if they have the option of handling the financing for you. The dealer gets paid for the financing they sign up just as car dealers do. They will base their selling price on the amount of profit they want on the total deal and if financing it they can lower the "selling price" that you see.

Follow the money is the truth.

Some of that is simply not true. If the dealer does in fact arrange financing, he will make money doing it. How much he will make is not known until the loan is approved or at least the dealer has seen the buyer's credit report and negotiated an acceptable interest rate with the customer.

Any money made on the sale of the vehicle is basically secure once the vehicle is delivered. Money made on the financing of the vehicle is a theory for some time to come. If the customer finds and arranges alternative financing and pays off the loan, the dealer is charged back for most of the money he made on financing.

Most salesmen participate at a very low percentage of financing profit as do most sales managers. It is to their benefit to make as much profit on the actual sale as possible before the financing becomes an issue.

For those and other reasons, it would be the rare dealer who looks at the total package ignoring the profit made on the actual sale.

Plus, in today's world, interest rate participation (meaning the dealer gets a percentage of the interest rate charged above the rate the bank approved the loan for) is virtually non-existent. Dealers usually now earn a flat fee based on the size of the loan and must write the loan at the rate the bank approved. The dealer may or may not be able to negotiate with the bank for a lower rate (often by getting a bigger down payment from the customer lowering the bank's exposure or changing terms) or by providing the bank with additional information that would make the bank's internal credit decision tree score higher. While they do and will try to make as much profit as possible, dealers also are fully aware that they make nothing on a deal that does not happen. Coming up with 1001 ways to not work with a dealer is not going to make it any easier or cheaper to buy a rig. No one would expect to negotiate on real estate without providing the seller with proof of their ability to buy and good faith money submitted with any offer. Why should buying an RV, that often costs as much as a house, be any different?