My son is looking for a manual transmission car to drive back and forth to school. He has been searching Craigslist, Cars.com, Autotrader, Facebook market. He has gone to local dealer lots and advertised private sellers. All the cars seem way over priced, super high mileage and/ or rust.
He can pay about $5,000 but there is nothing out there. We watched your show "now is the best time to buy a car". We don't know anyone getting rid of their cars. Many private sellers are scammers, posing as a true owner. When asked, some are honest saying they trade cars ( buy and sell ) for a living.
Any advice for friends of your show snowbound in Hartford, CT area?
Unfortunately, this pandemic inflated the car price. I would suggest to ask your friends and local trustworthy mechanics to help you find a car. Other than that, just keep the hope and be patient and hopefully you will find a good one.
I would continue looking at craigslist but "owners" only. You know try to find someone honest and a car in good condition. Look for deals like older cars with lower miles in good condition or vise versa. Just be patient that is the most important thing. As Scotty says, the way to get the best deal on the best cars is to buy it when you don't need it. Don't rush yourself because your son desperatly needs a car. Dealers could also be good as you shuold always have a mechanic check out the car pre-purchase to see condition anyways. Those honest honest guys who buy and sell cars, they might let you take it to a mechanic for a pre-purchase inspection. If the car is in mechanically good shape, then why not? As long as it is not wrecked flooded stolen or in bad mechanical shape. Also for dealer sales, I recommend looking at cargurus.com I use that I like it more than autotrader but that is my opinion.
Hope this helps!
Yeah, Craigslist and Ebay, Facebook Marketplace. Those are your best bets. Just make sure to inspect it before you buy it. Hope you get a good car!
Given the circumstances I'd suggest continuing to look on Craiglist and Facebook it sounds like you've got your guard up for scammers so those are good sources as long as you know what you're doing.
I'll also recommend the Buy Here, Pay Here lots which isn't normal for me. But pandemic times call for strange measures. Sometimes if you find an honest lot they'll sell you a car for cash at considerably less than they would financing it. I don't know about in Hartford CT, but in my area the mark-up for a financed car is $3,000 - $4,000. Meaning they'd sell it on payments for $8,000, but might sell it for cash of $4,000 - $5,000. You might have to beat them in a head with a 2 x 4 to get them to understand you're not putting down a down payment nor do you have a comfortable monthly payment. (That's 99.9% of the people they deal with...so paying cash for a car is kind of rare.) For them...they don't have to wait a couple of years for their money and they don't have to worry about possibly paying to repo it...so if you're paying cash they can give you some wiggle room. Not every lot will do this, but it's worth asking.
As already mentioned here, Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace are the sources to check first. You may also try eBay, look for the top rated sellers with good review history. I've recently purchased a decent Rav 4 on eBay. Had to do some work on it, but overall, I'm happy with the price and the car condition.
Similar topic is going on there. Perhaps it will interest you. Good luck!
https://carkiller.com/scottykilmer/qa/car-question-3/
