Lance Travel Trailer, can I afford one?

troubledwaters wrote:
It's really not that complicated

Well it is, if you don't know what the item in question is worth. Every vehicle is a commodity, the same vehicle with the same price structure at every dealership. The winner is always the one with the leverage. And there's ZERO LEVERAGE in walking into a dealership and haggling. You're playing an away game, and no one there is rooting for your team. That dealer's competitor isn't the other brands, it's the other dealers who sell his brand. And the winning leverage always comes from having several of them compete for your business.

Add the fact that dealerships have an overhead expense of 12% to 15% of revenue, and you'd have to be brain dead to believe the invoice price is in the same area code as any actual cost number.

Next time someone gives you an invoice price, divide it by the MSRP to get the percentage. It will most likely be below 12% - do you think they can run a business on that profit margin?

Dealers know people use the internet to get pricing. Therefore they hide profit in the invoice price.

If anyone wants to give advice on finding out the real cost the dealer paid the factory, that would be swell.

Darsben1 is merely suggesting to figure out (somehow) the price you want to pay - out the door, and be willing to walk if you can't get it.

I'm saying the same thing, except use the phone to call internet sales managers of several regional dealers to get their best price, and then use that to make them compete against each other.