Kevin Hunter is one of the best educators on the internet for helping people to get the best deal on their new vehicle. I would recommend you go and watch some of his videos.

https://www.youtube.com/user/kevinhunter7

 

I've watched lots of his videos. I think he even had one on factory orders. They're helpful for general strategies, but I'm looking for more detailed information at this point.

 

Southeast's region is a different world. They have control over everything, going back to the deal they struck when Toyota first started exporting from Japan.

When I have looked at incentives in the Northeast (where I live), it's abundantly clear that the big $ cash back/low lease rate/low APR financing are mutually exclusive. Pick only one from col.A. Smaller incentives like college grad or military generally can be stacked on top of the big ones. Just the way it is. The best promo prices at my supermarket are often "limit 1".

When I ordered my '15 TAH, I knew that incentives were based on date of delivery. I had that conversation with the seller, and consciously accepted the risk. My reward was it went up by $500 in the time between order and delivery.

 

Southeast Toyota really is obnoxious. Can you say Toyoguard? The bigger question is does their control mean you are never going to get as good a deal in their region as outside?

 

You should be able to get the whole deal in writing prior to placing the order, so all of your homework about pricing applies.

However, incentives change monthly so the dealer can't promise a certain incentive will be available at the time you actually take delivery. You can't lock in any incentive deals at the time of the order.

I've benefitted from that twice in the past, as the incentives available at the time of delivery turned out to be better than they were at the time I placed the order. It's a bit of a gamble, but it's possible that it can turn out in your favor.

 

I asked the salesperson about this, because I thought it was weird they would offer the two prices given the fact that they don't know the incentives at the time of delivery. They said those would be honored at the time of delivery. I was told the manager just tries to give the best deal and makes it work even if the incentives change. That seems unlikely. They're never going to give you a price hoping the incentives don't change. And they obviously can't guarantee a financing rate. Either they know the incentives in advance from Southeast Toyota or they aren't really factoring them into the price. Or maybe something in between. They probably know there's going to be some financing deal and some dealer cash offer. It's been the same for months (the 0% APR actually went from 4 years to 5 years last month), and maybe they know it's not going to drop below $1000, so they give me the two prices with the $1000 difference. If it goes up, they should, in theory, give me that difference.

So should I just set aside their two offers and negotiate on one price that is independent of incentives? Then say I'll choose the incentive I want when the vehicle comes in? It seems like doing that would definitely result in a higher price because they aren't going to give me their best deal off MSRP and then let me take another $1000 off that. Having to deal with the two numbers makes it difficult.

 

As Toto mentioned, there is NO way for any dealer to "lock in" incentives. If you order in March, and it doesn't arrive till June, those will most definitely change. I was doing the same thing when ordering my XSE Rav4 Hybrid. Thankfully, the incentives actually got better, so that worked out, but this was also last Summer when they were super hard to acquire.

 

I don't know that their pricing is any better or worse than other regions. Anyway, most of it comes down to how much profit your dealer wants/needs to get out of your deal.

I have read that they do tend to insist on adding some extras (possibly such as Toyoguard) all the time, so you may get more things than you want on the car, driving up the retail price more than you'd like.

 

The target price is whatever you're satisfied with. As you've found, there is no single magic number, as there are too many variables involved. Ask whatever you like; the worst that can happen is they say "no".

 

That means you can essentially call their financed offer the pre-incentive price, as it doesn't take into account the current $1000 incentive. The problem is I have no idea what my target is at that point. If you take the TrueCar numbers at face value, they include incentives. They also exclude dealer fees which almost every dealer in the state charges, but this dealer does not. That sounds great, but it just means the fee is built into the selling price, so it is even harder to use the TrueCar numbers as a point of comparison, as they can't afford to come down from MSRP as much as a dealer charging a $1000 doc fee. Their financed number is 7.1% off MSRP, which isn't great. I found a thread on the forums with people's deals, and it seems like the discounts on hybrids are less than on the V6 models, with discounts before incentives in the range of 7-12% off MSRP, with the average around 9%. Going in at 12% off seems like a big ask, especially considering there are no dealer fees.

I agree with you. Just remember it is your money and they are not making you spend it. I just ordered a 2021 Highlander platinum Blzzard pearl (Black interior) Body side molding, all weather liners, wheel locks, running boards and an OEM hitch with harness. 52,912 MSRP. My price was 45,600 plus conveyence fee (599) and registration (399) plust CT sales tax(6.35%). I put a deposit on it last week and the incentive was 1000 loyalty and since then it has changed to 1500. I hope it comes in before the end of March because I am eligiable for another 500 dollars off.
I live right near the dealer so I went with them. I walked away at their first offer and then I mentioned I got a better price somewhere else, which I did. At first, he said no way I cannot get close to that number. I then emailed the General manager and said during the pandemic the the emphasis for the consumer was "Support and buy local" They ended up getting back to me beating their offer by 200 dollars by the end of the week. I might have been able to do a little better but I was done playing the game.

 

^ Makes sense, except that you can never say the word "invoice" to a dealer. You need to have a specific number in mind. If you say "invoice", the dealer makes up a number that they say is the invoice price. You have to be as informed as you can be about "invoice price" from an independent site such as KBB or Edmunds.

My most recent example of this...
The dealer I did not buy my 2020 Highlander from showed me a bogus invoice price with a printout from some Web site I've never heard of that was only about $1500 below MSRP. I didn't even mention the word invoice, and I wasn't questioning the price of the new car. The question at the time was about the offer for my trade-in, and they tried to justify the deal by showing me "what a great deal I was getting" on the new car. All that did for me was prove how much BS they were shoveling and let me know I had to walk out of there.

 

Fair enough. I would engage at least 2-3 dealers in that approach and when 2 or more give you the exact same invoice number you can be fairly assured of knowing you have the right number.

 

You may want to check out CarBargains - Bypass all the hassles of traditional car shopping

My other approach is to email real managers if you can locate them on dealer websites (on some dealer websites every salesperson is listed as an 'Internet Sales Manager', you want to avoid those 'managers'.) I would tell the manager the specific configuration you want to order, and if the price is agreeable, you may give them a deposit to show you're serious. My experience is that even if their initial quote is high, they'll follow up with you and lower their quote to seal the deal.

 

You may want to check out CarBargains - Bypass all the hassles of traditional car shopping

My other approach is to email real managers if you can locate them on dealer websites (on some dealer websites every salesperson is listed as an 'Internet Sales Manager', you want to avoid those 'managers'.) I would tell the manager the specific configuration you want to order, and if the price is agreeable, you may give them a deposit to show you're serious. My experience is that even if their initial quote is high, they'll follow up with you and lower their quote to seal the deal.

Well said that is what I did.

 

There's about $4,000 between MSRP and invoice. (Contrary to that fake number a dealer showed me and said was invoice price.) Based on other things I've seen including posts here, there's maybe another $1,500 to $2,500 of hidden savings below invoice for the dealer, between the holdback and other aggregate incentives that they may qualify for. That's about 15% off MSRP. I haven't seen anyone post that they've gotten 15% off MSRP, so maybe there's the point you're looking for with Toyota.

Note that I'm not counting the monthly advertised incentives in those figures, which I feel is bonus money and has nothing to do with the actual cost of the car if you're trying to find "rock bottom". I'm also not figuring anything you absolutely have to add, such as taxes and title/registration. That will affect your net discount "out the door", but those are other variables that change from state to state or even county to county and the dealer doesn't control that.

The true price of anything depends on what one person is willing to pay for it and another person is willing to sell it for. All of this analysis can work or not work for any given dealer on any given day.

 

I'm going to be purchasing a 2021 Highlander Hybrid XLE FWD in Ruby Flare Pearl (so, special color) without the Premium Audio package as a factory order. I'm looking for some advice on coming up with a reasonable price I want to pay, especially given the incentive situation I'll describe below. I was originally looking at essentially the same vehicle on a dealer's lot. When I was going through that process, I found out that there is an incentive that has been going on for months on the Highlander Hybrids that is either 0% APR or $1000 off if you don't use the Toyota financing. This is through Southeast Toyota. I am no car buying expert, but I know you never talk financing until you have the out the door price locked in. That is what I did when pursuing the vehicle on the lot. Once I started talking to the finance person, I mentioned I would be using the 0% financing and they sent me back to the salesman. I was then told the price of the car would be $1000 higher because you couldn't get the $1000 incentive if you took the financing incentive. At that point, I walked away because I felt like they were going back on the agreed upon deal. Time passed and I realized a factory order was going to be a better option for a number of reasons. In that time, I spoke with multiple dealers and they all said the same thing about the incentive being one or the other. That $1000 incentive isn't mentioned on the Toyota website (link below), but it is on the Costco auto page (link below). If you read the fine print, both pages say you can't combine dealer cash with financing incentives, so everything seems to point to this being a legitimate limitation. Is this legitimate or is every dealer trying to squeeze an extra $1000 out of me?

https://www.toyota.com/southeasttoyota/deals-incentives/highlanderhybrid_apr_308718/

Costco Auto Program │ Car buying made easy │ New vehicles & more!

That brings me to negotiating this factory order. There is no way of knowing the incentives that will be available when the car arrives, although both incentives I mentioned have been going on since I started looking seriously in November. I've used the local Toyota dealer that has a good reputation to do test drives and asked them to give me a price on the vehicle. They gave me two numbers, one for cash or with my own financing and one with the Toyota financing. At least they were up front about it and didn't try to pull what the other dealer did with the vehicle on their lot. The cash offer was $1000 less than the financed offer, as you might expect. They must know or are assuming the incentives will be the same over the next couple of months. Assuming this limitation is legitimate, what is the right way to negotiate here?

I feel like coming up with what you want to pay is always a crapshoot because you don't have all the information. When invoice actually meant something and incentives were more focused on individual vehicles, you could estimate holdback, incentives, etc. Now, invoice has crept so close to MSRP, it's not that useful and dealer incentives are mostly for bulk sales. If I try to build up my price this way, I would need to know the incentives, and all I know is that $1000, which may or may not apply. You can avoid this by trying to come up with a number based on % off MSRP, but then you have to rely on something like TrueCar. I don't like doing that because they make their money from the dealers, so I don't trust their numbers. However, I don't see any better options. So, in my zip code, TrueCar says the average savings off MSRP is 6.5% for the Highlander Hybrid in my configuration. The low end of the "Great Price" range is 10%, so, based on that and my negotiations on another vehicle that fell through (details later), I chose 10.5% for my calculation. Is that reasonable? Should I be going lower? I'm assuming dealers will be less enthusiastic about a factory order than selling a vehicle off their lot, so that was part of my reasoning. You also can't see the other boundary of the "Excellent Price" range, which I'm sure is by design (continued below).

View attachment 325481

Here's how I'm arriving at a number:
Base MSRP: $41,310
10.5% off Base MSRP: $36,972.45
Accessories at dealer claimed dealer invoice: $2,219.59 (24.2% off MSRP)
Destination: $1,175
Total Selling Price: $40,367.04 (before tax, title, tag)

For another reference point, I calculated the total based on invoice as well:
Base Invoice: $37,781
Accessories at dealer claimed dealer invoice: $2,219.59
Destination: $1,175
Total Selling Price: $41,175.59 (before tax, title, tag)

The 10.5% off number is a little more than $800 under invoice. I know I want to beat invoice, but I really don't know how far under invoice is reasonable in my area right now.

The dealer’s initial offer for cash and Toyota financing are below.

Cash: $41,183
Financed: $42,183

They gave me out the door numbers as well, which included tax, title, tag. I calculated tax and determined the cost of the title and tag and their numbers are accurate and reasonable. They do not charge dealer fees.

The dealer’s cash price is 9.3% off MSRP. The financed price is 7.1% off MSRP.

The dealer’s cash price is $7.41 over invoice. The financed price is $1007.41 over invoice.

The dealer’s cash price is $815.95 over my calculated 10.5% off MSRP amount. The financed price is $1815.96 over my calculated 10.5% off MSRP amount.

First, so I’m comparing apples to apples, when considering % off MSRP, should I be targeting the cash price (i.e. extra $1000 off) or financed price? This “dealer cash” would be part of the discount off MSRP, and there’s no way to tell which sales on TrueCar used which incentive.

The cash price is essentially invoice. Again, I know invoice isn’t their cost, so it’s not some amazing deal. It’s not terrible, if you believe the TrueCar data. The next question is how much can I expect to get them to come down on those prices? And how do I handle the cash and financed prices? If the $1000 difference is legitimate, it seems like I need to negotiate on both numbers so I have the option of using the 0% financing if it is available when the vehicle arrives. I obviously don’t want to leave money on the table, but I don’t want to throw out some laughable number either. I guess what I really need to know is the % off MSRP I should be shooting for, considering it being a factory order, and if that would be applicable to the cash or financed price. Because the dealer’s first offer is relatively close to my 10.5% off number, maybe 10.5% isn’t enough off MSRP.

For what it's worth, when I was negotiating with the dealer that had the similar vehicle on their lot, I tried multiple times to get them to come down from their offer, which was about 10.5% off MSRP (and included the $1000 incentive), but they wouldn't budge and the vehicle sold within the next week. It's worth noting that they had a $1000 dealer fee, which TrueCar excludes from their calculation, so if you put that back into the calculation by subtracting $1000 from their discount, the 10.5% becomes 8.2%. As I noted, my local dealer does not charge dealer fees, so their cash offer at 9.3% off MSRP was better than that.

Another data point: When I was looking at cars at dealers, one salesperson at another dealer who no longer had the vehicle I was asking about told me the offer from the dealer that had the vehicle on the lot was a good one and that if she were me, she would take it. I’m not sure that’s worth much, but she talked things over with me on the phone a couple times even after finding out the vehicle I was asking about at her dealership had already been sold.

If I really wanted the best deal, I should call every dealer within driving distance and ask for the same quote. But after my experience calling dealers about cars on their lots, I really don’t want to deal with that. I feel like with the advice from some more knowledgeable people here I can probably get a good deal from my local dealer and avoid the hassle.

Any thoughts, recommendations, or suggestions would be appreciated.

Try this website and You Tube channel.

CarEdge Expert Car Buying Services & Tools

Founded by Ray and Zach Shefska, CarEdge offers a car buying service & is the best place to buy, sell, insure, finance, and protect your car.

yourautoadvocate.com

 

Thanks. I’ve watched their videos. They are helpful for general strategies, but when you’re talking specific numbers you need more. I’ve looked at their reports and there seems to be a lot of variability. It’s hard to make an automated tool that works for every new car in the country, so there is naturally going to be a window of uncertainty around a specific car. It’s still helpful though.

 

I'm going to be purchasing a 2021 Highlander Hybrid XLE FWD in Ruby Flare Pearl (so, special color) without the Premium Audio package as a factory order. I'm looking for some advice on coming up with a reasonable price I want to pay, especially given the incentive situation I'll describe below. I was originally looking at essentially the same vehicle on a dealer's lot. When I was going through that process, I found out that there is an incentive that has been going on for months on the Highlander Hybrids that is either 0% APR or $1000 off if you don't use the Toyota financing. This is through Southeast Toyota. I am no car buying expert, but I know you never talk financing until you have the out the door price locked in. That is what I did when pursuing the vehicle on the lot. Once I started talking to the finance person, I mentioned I would be using the 0% financing and they sent me back to the salesman. I was then told the price of the car would be $1000 higher because you couldn't get the $1000 incentive if you took the financing incentive. At that point, I walked away because I felt like they were going back on the agreed upon deal. Time passed and I realized a factory order was going to be a better option for a number of reasons. In that time, I spoke with multiple dealers and they all said the same thing about the incentive being one or the other. That $1000 incentive isn't mentioned on the Toyota website (link below), but it is on the Costco auto page (link below). If you read the fine print, both pages say you can't combine dealer cash with financing incentives, so everything seems to point to this being a legitimate limitation. Is this legitimate or is every dealer trying to squeeze an extra $1000 out of me?

https://www.toyota.com/southeasttoyota/deals-incentives/highlanderhybrid_apr_308718/

Costco Auto Program │ Car buying made easy │ New vehicles & more!

That brings me to negotiating this factory order. There is no way of knowing the incentives that will be available when the car arrives, although both incentives I mentioned have been going on since I started looking seriously in November. I've used the local Toyota dealer that has a good reputation to do test drives and asked them to give me a price on the vehicle. They gave me two numbers, one for cash or with my own financing and one with the Toyota financing. At least they were up front about it and didn't try to pull what the other dealer did with the vehicle on their lot. The cash offer was $1000 less than the financed offer, as you might expect. They must know or are assuming the incentives will be the same over the next couple of months. Assuming this limitation is legitimate, what is the right way to negotiate here?

I feel like coming up with what you want to pay is always a crapshoot because you don't have all the information. When invoice actually meant something and incentives were more focused on individual vehicles, you could estimate holdback, incentives, etc. Now, invoice has crept so close to MSRP, it's not that useful and dealer incentives are mostly for bulk sales. If I try to build up my price this way, I would need to know the incentives, and all I know is that $1000, which may or may not apply. You can avoid this by trying to come up with a number based on % off MSRP, but then you have to rely on something like TrueCar. I don't like doing that because they make their money from the dealers, so I don't trust their numbers. However, I don't see any better options. So, in my zip code, TrueCar says the average savings off MSRP is 6.5% for the Highlander Hybrid in my configuration. The low end of the "Great Price" range is 10%, so, based on that and my negotiations on another vehicle that fell through (details later), I chose 10.5% for my calculation. Is that reasonable? Should I be going lower? I'm assuming dealers will be less enthusiastic about a factory order than selling a vehicle off their lot, so that was part of my reasoning. You also can't see the other boundary of the "Excellent Price" range, which I'm sure is by design (continued below).

View attachment 325481

Here's how I'm arriving at a number:
Base MSRP: $41,310
10.5% off Base MSRP: $36,972.45
Accessories at dealer claimed dealer invoice: $2,219.59 (24.2% off MSRP)
Destination: $1,175
Total Selling Price: $40,367.04 (before tax, title, tag)

For another reference point, I calculated the total based on invoice as well:
Base Invoice: $37,781
Accessories at dealer claimed dealer invoice: $2,219.59
Destination: $1,175
Total Selling Price: $41,175.59 (before tax, title, tag)

The 10.5% off number is a little more than $800 under invoice. I know I want to beat invoice, but I really don't know how far under invoice is reasonable in my area right now.

The dealer’s initial offer for cash and Toyota financing are below.

Cash: $41,183
Financed: $42,183

They gave me out the door numbers as well, which included tax, title, tag. I calculated tax and determined the cost of the title and tag and their numbers are accurate and reasonable. They do not charge dealer fees.

The dealer’s cash price is 9.3% off MSRP. The financed price is 7.1% off MSRP.

The dealer’s cash price is $7.41 over invoice. The financed price is $1007.41 over invoice.

The dealer’s cash price is $815.95 over my calculated 10.5% off MSRP amount. The financed price is $1815.96 over my calculated 10.5% off MSRP amount.

First, so I’m comparing apples to apples, when considering % off MSRP, should I be targeting the cash price (i.e. extra $1000 off) or financed price? This “dealer cash” would be part of the discount off MSRP, and there’s no way to tell which sales on TrueCar used which incentive.

The cash price is essentially invoice. Again, I know invoice isn’t their cost, so it’s not some amazing deal. It’s not terrible, if you believe the TrueCar data. The next question is how much can I expect to get them to come down on those prices? And how do I handle the cash and financed prices? If the $1000 difference is legitimate, it seems like I need to negotiate on both numbers so I have the option of using the 0% financing if it is available when the vehicle arrives. I obviously don’t want to leave money on the table, but I don’t want to throw out some laughable number either. I guess what I really need to know is the % off MSRP I should be shooting for, considering it being a factory order, and if that would be applicable to the cash or financed price. Because the dealer’s first offer is relatively close to my 10.5% off number, maybe 10.5% isn’t enough off MSRP.

For what it's worth, when I was negotiating with the dealer that had the similar vehicle on their lot, I tried multiple times to get them to come down from their offer, which was about 10.5% off MSRP (and included the $1000 incentive), but they wouldn't budge and the vehicle sold within the next week. It's worth noting that they had a $1000 dealer fee, which TrueCar excludes from their calculation, so if you put that back into the calculation by subtracting $1000 from their discount, the 10.5% becomes 8.2%. As I noted, my local dealer does not charge dealer fees, so their cash offer at 9.3% off MSRP was better than that.

Another data point: When I was looking at cars at dealers, one salesperson at another dealer who no longer had the vehicle I was asking about told me the offer from the dealer that had the vehicle on the lot was a good one and that if she were me, she would take it. I’m not sure that’s worth much, but she talked things over with me on the phone a couple times even after finding out the vehicle I was asking about at her dealership had already been sold.

If I really wanted the best deal, I should call every dealer within driving distance and ask for the same quote. But after my experience calling dealers about cars on their lots, I really don’t want to deal with that. I feel like with the advice from some more knowledgeable people here I can probably get a good deal from my local dealer and avoid the hassle.

Any thoughts, recommendations, or suggestions would be appreciated.

Well I hope somebody has an answer for you but the way I look at it is if the paint is shiny and the interior smells sweet I bent over and give them what they want dealers love me

 

That is certainly one way of handling the situation.

 

Update: I gave the dealer an offer of 12% off MSRP before incentives. They would not budge from their offer of 7.1% off MSRP before incentives. They said their offer was $100 under invoice. However, the invoice price they gave me was a little under $1000 over the invoice price readily available online. The interesting thing is in the Southeast Toyota region, there appears to be an advertising fee of about $925, which is shown in the invoice price on the Costco Auto site below, but that never appears to be broken out. That may explain the discrepancy. When I asked about the advertising fee, backend money, and the fact that the price they paid for the vehicle is not the invoice price, the manager gave me some non-answers and stuck to his number. Ultimately, how the dealer gets to their OTD number is irrelevant, so there was no point pressing the issue further. I have now been given two offers, one on a vehicle on a dealer’s lot and one on a factory order, that are essentially the same, and in both cases, the dealers would not budge. Those numbers are essentially the market average for my area according to True Car. One caveat with that comparison is True Car excludes dealer fees from their prices. Dealer fees are in the neighborhood of $1000 in Florida, with one of the only exceptions being the dealer with which I was just discussing the factory order. They do not charge any dealer fees. The second caveat is True Car prices include regional incentives. For Southeast Toyota, that has been $1000 on the Highlander Hybrid for months. Given that, you would essentially need to add $2000 to the True Car prices to make a fair comparison to the offer I just received. That would put the discount at 11.5%. Comparing that to the True Car data, that would be a good deal. However, when I review prices in the Highlander Hybrid thread with deals real people have received, the comparison has to be to pre-incentive prices, as those naturally vary by region. Those range from 7-12% before incentives. I’m going to start calling other dealers, but I get the feeling the Southeast Toyota region, and maybe Florida specifically, along with the relative scarcity of vehicle I want, is just going to prevent me from doing much better.

Costco Auto Program │ Car buying made easy │ New vehicles & more!

 

I've been lurking around this forum for a while now. Is there a discussion on what dealerships across the country people are factory ordering from. I just ordered my Ram 1500 back in February from a dealership in Louisiana (I'm in Phoenix) after learning about them in the Ram truck forums. I was hoping there was something similar in this forum somewhere. I was able to get 18% off MSRP. Even with paying to have it shipped to me I saved $4k from the best offer I got from any dealer in Arizona.

 

You can use the information in the pricing thread for negotiating at dealers near you.

2020 Highlander Prices Paid?

Inventory near me is starting to pick up....mostly L, LE, and XLE, with only a couple of Limited so far. I am in the market pretty soon and was hoping to get a read on what people are paying. So far I only see MSRP on dealer sites with a couple showing military and graduate discounts. If...

www.toyotanation.com

I've been hanging around this forum a long time, and I haven't seen anything like what you're asking. No dealer has any magical deals that are so much better than most other dealers to make it worthwhile to cross state lines just to order the car. You won't get 18% off a Toyota product, as there isn't that much margin them. The "domestic" automakers have a lot more room like that for those big discounts. Plus, some of the add-on accessory options may also vary by the region of the country with Toyota, as much of the southeastern US is managed by independent distributors. Toyota has broken the country into 13 distribution regions, and each region sets the monthly incentive (rebate/financing) deals on their own.

The Toyota extended warranty is a totally different story, and there's lots of discussion around here about where to get the best buy in the country on that.