Quote:
Originally Posted by ted tcb  Nice cars, Ian.
I'm curious, do you typically buy these cars "right", and trade them for what you paid.
Or, are you accumulating negative equity?
I'm guessing you must be buying the cars close to wholesale, and them flipping them for what you have in them.
Are insurance premiums hefty on the Hummer and M3?
Last question ... what happened to your IS250/350? |
It's complicated. I suppose it's sort of a hybrid of both. I mean really, If you finance a car, unless you put down 10-15000.00 on it right from the start, you're always going to have some negative equity accepting the best dealer trade offer. The key is I search ALONG time for the next car to be priced 3-5000.00 under fair market and in turn as much as 9-10000 under NADA retail so that I have the headroom to finance it, plus a little cash down. The H2 for example was a good 4000.00 below the next best price anywhere in FL, and the LOWEST in the entire COUNTRY. Funny story on that, actually. The guy who I was in competition with to get the H2 was actually a DEALER from North Carolina, but I got to it first because I was local. The M3 wasn't the same phenomenal deal, but on the OTHER side of the equation I got very strong money for my 100k mile Range Rover, nearly 21000.00.
If that's not enough, I get even more creative. If I need to make up some more of the distance versus a dealer trade offer, I will throw the car up on Craigslist and Autotrader for well BELOW market value, but a few thousand ABOVE the dealers' best trade offer and then BRING that customer in with me to the dealership to just pass my car through to them, then carry the bit of negative equity that's left over.
This allows me to continue the cycle and enjoy a new one every so often. It is not cheap, but the luxury of being able to drive a different car every few months is really nice. The truth however is I really want to stick with something for a while, disasters aside, I'm going to try to give these a chance. I've said that before, but I'm pretty worn out now.
The M3 insurance isn't that bad, the H2 with progressive reflected a 235.00 change in my insurance premium which is absolutely ABSURD. As a result, I'm going to try switching to a different company. I found out that Progressive has some weird rating criteria. For example, DUIs are given 0 points because in Progressive's opinion, they are unlikely to remain on the road if they offend again, and if they do theyre either going to die or go to jail. The H2 gets a huge hit on points because it's a big vehicle likely to do alot of damage to the other car, a completely upside down approach versus other insurance companies who place more emphasis on the cost of damages to YOUR car.
