Clients of mine are currently trying to build their credit and positioning themselves to buy a home in the future. With this said, they have questions about the best way to search, finance, and purchase a car so I’ve done some research for them that I thought would be helpful.
With interest rates at all-time lows, now is a good time to buy a car if you can afford one. And if you haven’t bought a car in years, you might be surprised to discover that you can do most of the shopping online. New cars and dealer-certified used cars can easily be located using major networks, such as Yahoo Autos. Dealership inventory is connected to these sites, making it easy to see what’s available. If you’re looking for a cut-and-dry purchase, this is a starting point.
Many people don’t know that you can get cars through Costco. Costco has set bargain prices with participating dealers. These prices are based on model demand, which means that if you won’t see too much of a discount on popular cars but you’ll see a significant discount on average- or low-demand cars. The nice thing about Costco’s service is that it’s already a marked-down price and there’s no haggling involved.
Now, what if you want to buy a used car from an advertisement or listing? The internet can help that out too. You can check the vehicle’s history by VIN number (there are a number of resources on this, including Carfax). You can also try and dig up information on the seller. If they are an independent dealer, check for vendor ratings and customer experiences. And if you’re looking at eBay Motors, there’s other information to verify that you’re dealing with a legit seller. We’ll go into that in a later post.
Because of the internet, a lot of people will buy cars sight-unseen these days. Remember that nothing works better than a test drive — you don’t want to get home and realize you hate the car you’re driving!
The views published here are the opinions of the writer and are not a substitute for legal counsel.
Israel Gonzalez
Real Estate Broker-Hollister CA
831-636-8858
www.nicereohomes.com
Click here to contact me by email
