by redLEAF (Posted Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:59:11 GMT)
+1 -- especially in higher sales tax states (like my berated IL); I've used the Carmax appraisal twice now on two separate transactions -- one for a trade on the our LEAF and more recently another for my trip car. Dealer's can make much more money on your used trade-in versus the new car they're selling you if its in decent shape. In the higher tax states where they do only tax you on the difference it could end up being enough to simply turn it in -- it should be pointed out that Carmax does give you wholesale at auction pricing but at least you have a reference in hand that the dealer can't ignore -- some dealer's will advertise that they'll beat the Carmax offer by $500 but of course they may make that up by not discounting off much from MSRP on the new car --- as always it's a numbers game. I've used True Car for average selling price on the new car and edmunds on used car values and figure from there the target out of pocket I'm willing to pay --- if the dealer comes within a $1K or so, then I might try to get a few more spiffs (like free floor mats, etc.) thrown in but your time is worth money too so you need to determine how far to go. In the early days, we weren't getting much if anything of a discount off MSRP off the LEAF, not so these days so both sides of the transaction requires a bit of research ... lastly, seem to recall that TX is like IL in that they tax you on the entire value of the car for leasing, not just the 'value' of the lease payments so you'll need to factor that in; would imagine just like IL that the sales tax is less the amount of the trade but not being from there can't tell you
RonDawg wrote:
The exception would be if your state only taxes the difference in value between the new car and the trade-in (which is not the case where I am).
+1 -- especially in higher sales tax states (like my berated IL); I've used the Carmax appraisal twice now on two separate transactions -- one for a trade on the our LEAF and more recently another for my trip car. Dealer's can make much more money on your used trade-in versus the new car they're selling you if its in decent shape. In the higher tax states where they do only tax you on the difference it could end up being enough to simply turn it in -- it should be pointed out that Carmax does give you wholesale at auction pricing but at least you have a reference in hand that the dealer can't ignore -- some dealer's will advertise that they'll beat the Carmax offer by $500 but of course they may make that up by not discounting off much from MSRP on the new car --- as always it's a numbers game. I've used True Car for average selling price on the new car and edmunds on used car values and figure from there the target out of pocket I'm willing to pay --- if the dealer comes within a $1K or so, then I might try to get a few more spiffs (like free floor mats, etc.) thrown in but your time is worth money too so you need to determine how far to go. In the early days, we weren't getting much if anything of a discount off MSRP off the LEAF, not so these days so both sides of the transaction requires a bit of research ... lastly, seem to recall that TX is like IL in that they tax you on the entire value of the car for leasing, not just the 'value' of the lease payments so you'll need to factor that in; would imagine just like IL that the sales tax is less the amount of the trade but not being from there can't tell you