RIGHT OR WRONG TIME TO BUY?????

[710-oil-614]

On car buying in the current state of events:

Absolute prices will continue to go up, that's called "inflation". However, income should also be going up, so it's deceptive to say something like "when I was a kid, a new truck cost less than $5000" because the average annual income was also just $10,000. With our rapid inflation due to political posturing, corporate profiteering, and world events, 5 years from now a new Maverick XLT will likely be $45-50k or more. But hopefully your salary has also risen by 30%.

In post Covid times, the Transit(not Connect) T250 van I bought for $26k new in 2016 had a street value of $30-40k, even with the 75-125k miles it had on it. Campervans were all the craze, new vehicles were hard to get (supply lines were damaged), so the prices for many used vehicles skyrocketed. In the last year the street value has plummeted to less than I paid new, however.

Trying to "beat the system" by timing it is difficult because you never know what's coming. Prior to 2020, anyone paying MSRP or over were considered foolish, because you could always find new cars and trucks priced under MSRP with sales incentives. Now there is a new paradigm. Heck, during post Covid 2020-2025, people were paying 10, 20, even 40%+ over MSRP (Bronco, CyberTruck), and those who like to "order" a vehicle instead of buying off the lot were waiting 6 months to a year or more before delivery.

Prices are never "going down", but perhaps prices as a ratio of income will go down. I'd suggest that 6 months gross income is the most you should ever spend on a vehicle.

The issue is that wages for all by and large are stagnant and not keeping up with hyper inflation, not even close.

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[mapnerd]

500 mile radius from me there are 100+ 2024 Mavericks. ZERO Tremors, 38 hybrids. That is a huge radius so they are not plentiful in Tremor trim.

At this point in the year, you may have to go for a drive to get a deal. Of the 20 I posted above, I just went and counted and 15 of them are Tremors. Since during MY24 the Tremor was an option and not a trim, you may not be able to simply "filter" for Tremor. I couldn't. You can tell however by the orange recovery hooks which are a dead giveaway for a Tremor.

Just because there aren't many near you, doesn't mean they are too hard to find. If you're not willing to go for the drive that's okay too, stay local and pay a little more for the pleasure of not having to drive half way across the country to get the deal you want. For what it's worth, those in my area have the opposite problem - no MY24 hybrids.

 

[surfstar]

Wait for a recession. Could happen soon. Or not.

Best time to buy a vehicle is when you want one, but aren't desperate / "need" one, and can afford one.

 

[mapnerd]

Im not shopping but the OP is and if he takes a week or so comparing trying to price match the truck he wants may be gone. I get from your posts your perspective of affordability. But a person's time is valuable also. Yes tremor was an option and if you check that option on the Ford website it filters all tremors regardless of trim level.

Yep. Opportunity cost is real. I personally don't trust the Ford website for finding vehicles. Not sure how many times its told me a vehicle was at a dealer that wasn't there, or that there weren't vehicles in a certain radius that absolutely were.

Tedious, but my method is to open Google Maps, pan and zoom to the general area I want to search and type in "Ford Dealers". When all the little icons pop up, I click on each one working my way across the map and visit the dealer's website and search their website for what I am looking for. To your point, not everyone has the time or patience to do that and that's okay. They'll just have to either get lucky or pay a little more to relieve themselves of that burden. Or hope the Ford website works as they purport it does which I find is hit or miss depending on the day

 

[MakinDoForNow]

Times have changed. If used vehicles are not available and your afraid to spend 25K for one that might have a unknown history, you have no choice but to buy new. Waiting around for prices to drop, I don't think so. Everything has gone up in the last year wether we like it or not. A few years ago, you could live on 65K a year very comfortable, now now it takes 85K or more!

At 82 it takes about $8300.00/year just to pay for Medicare supplement insurance for 2. Not to mention $3400 property taxes. Plus auto ins. Etc..... only have 14 $709.87 2.25% payments on my 2022 lariat left. That and monthly Dole's to the 2 of my 4 grandchildren who are in college. They are pretty well staggered so will only have 2 or 3 years that I will have to fund doles for 3 at a time. 1 is getting doled in HS because she is taking a class which involves training in hospital surgical room and doesn't have time for a paying job. So I fund that. On surgery days she has to leave house at 4:45 to watch something like "Bunion Removal".

 

[MakinDoForNow]

On car buying in the current state of events:

Absolute prices will continue to go up, that's called "inflation". However, income should also be going up, so it's deceptive to say something like "when I was a kid, a new truck cost less than $5000" because the average annual income was also just $10,000. With our rapid inflation due to political posturing, corporate profiteering, and world events, 5 years from now a new Maverick XLT will likely be $45-50k or more. But hopefully your salary has also risen by 30%.

In post Covid times, the Transit(not Connect) T250 van I bought for $26k new in 2016 had a street value of $30-40k, even with the 75-125k miles it had on it. Campervans were all the craze, new vehicles were hard to get (supply lines were damaged), so the prices for many used vehicles skyrocketed. In the last year the street value has plummeted to less than I paid new, however.

Trying to "beat the system" by timing it is difficult because you never know what's coming. Prior to 2020, anyone paying MSRP or over were considered foolish, because you could always find new cars and trucks priced under MSRP with sales incentives. Now there is a new paradigm. Heck, during post Covid 2020-2025, people were paying 10, 20, even 40%+ over MSRP (Bronco, CyberTruck), and those who like to "order" a vehicle instead of buying off the lot were waiting 6 months to a year or more before delivery.

Prices are never "going down", but perhaps prices as a ratio of income will go down. I'd suggest that 6 months gross income is the most you should ever spend on a vehicle.

Daddy always told me to never drive anything you could not walk away from at the next intersection. I do carry full replacement coverage on some vehicles currently two 2022 mavericks.

 

[mapnerd]

I'd suggest that 6 months gross income is the most you should ever spend on a vehicle.

That's a pretty decent rule of thumb.

 

[Escapologist]

I always open the dealership sites from the Ford inventory search. Yeah many times it's not on the dealership site.

It looks the same as the Ford.ca site, or rather I guess .ca is clone of parent, and from what my dealer guy was telling me, it works in a kinda conditional fashion, something like...

First off, it might be 2 or 3 days off, it's dependent on refresh cycles and admin input on the dealers ends, and confirmations.

Then what will show, is what is in dealer inventory that has been built. Now dealers might have unbuilt orders showing as "in transit, coming soon, on the way" etc, but those don't seem to get shown on Ford site. If they've been built though, even if they're still in Hermosillo they seem to show. Now, they may be effectively sold, but dealers don't actually pull them off their for sale inventory typically until full payment arrangements have been made. So they might be under deposit and unavailable, but they still show on Ford site, dealer may or may not hide them on their site. What might never show up though is customer orders where the finance is all arranged or big pre-payment is involved, they will be offmarket completely and may not show on Ford or dealer site.

Then there's the variance in how dealers handle things, how on the ball they are with managing their site, and quirks of the software at their end. I've enquired about a car before, and got told "Yah we know it's been on here forever, we sold the car a year ago but can't clear it off."

Some dealers are deliberate in delaying removal of "halo-ish" units from their website, kinda bait and switch with plausible deniability, get the customer in for something that already sold, and sell them something else.

Anyway, I guess it still boils down to, may or may not be there if seen on either Ford or Dealer site. Things you will probably find on dealer before ford are recent fallthroughs. Was reserved by deposit, time expired or customer refused, or couldn't get finance etc etc.

 

[F50RaptorNext]

5 months later, I am back here. The 2025 Maverick Tremor I was interested in (back then) is now finally on sale.

A dealer offered me a chance to take a Ranger Raptor for a test drive and I think I lost complete interest in the Maverick Tremor, but I am not sure because Ranger Raptors are selling for over 60k.

 

[Cherokee]

5 months later, I am back here. The 2025 Maverick Tremor I was interested in (back then) is now finally on sale.

A dealer offered me a chance to take a Ranger Raptor for a test drive and I think I lost complete interest in the Maverick Tremor, but I am not sure because Ranger Raptors are selling for over 60k.

GRAB IT ! And run rabbit run.

Go look at what $38,000 gets you elsewhere, or even $48,000
That’ll make you feel a lot better.

 

[Red Eyes - Wide Shut]

5 months later, I am back here. The 2025 Maverick Tremor I was interested in (back then) is now finally on sale.

A dealer offered me a chance to take a Ranger Raptor for a test drive and I think I lost complete interest in the Maverick Tremor, but I am not sure because Ranger Raptors are selling for over 60k.

Baby Raptor!

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