Just heard back from WRX man. He can do the inspection and test drive today.
How do you guys normally handle payment? Checks take time to clear and it seems unsafe to just carry that much hard cash around, and there are obvious withdrawal limits at ATMs, so do you guys usually deal with sellers directly at a bank via cashier check or something? I’m new to this sort of thing.
I don’t think I’ve ever given/received anything other than straight cash. Cashier’s check would probably be safer though.
They might be more willing to budge on the price if you can do cash right then and there as well.
So what I do is bring 200-500 as a deposit and then agree on a price there when you give the deposit. Then I go to the bank and get the rest of the cash or a cashiers check.
Essentially, I never being all the cash to the initial inspection.
The bank I use isn’t open on saturdays, it looks like. That’s kind of annoying…
I’ll take cash and hide it in my car until we make a deal and he/she is filling out the title. Maybe it’s not the best, but it’s how I do it when there is a substantial amount of money.
I want to have all the money, so I can say “I’ll give you this much right here right now” which often helps me get better deals.
Ah, that’s fair. You can always wait a day. 
I’m not super experienced with private party sales since ive only ever done it twice, and both times were kind of different.
this would have been an option a couple of hours ago, but I can’t really do it now. I’ll see what I can figure out with the guy.
Thanks for your help, you guys. Hopefully I’ll get something home soon and y’all can check out the goods.
I always pay for cars with $100 bills. gives you negotiating power when you have all big bills gets the seller excited.
“I like you car but man I can’t do $2700 for the car + accessport. I’ll do $2200 and throw the AP in I’ve got all $2200 in cash” really gets them to stop and think
I talked $1000 off my WRX that was listed as “firm” because i had a $10,000 stack of bills and they already agreed to sell it for $500 more than i paid to a guy out of state but i was there with cash.
lol. I that made me think of the cars I’ve payed 200 or 300 for, and handing over 2 or 3 bills.
obviously bring smaller bills for a $300 car bring 20s and 50’s… i’d bring 100’s and a few 50s (probably just 2) in kemokas case.
Honestly, I don’t do much bargaining with cars that cheep unless it is really bad. I’m not out to get a car cheaper then it’s worth. I won’t offer more then they ask, but if it’s a great deal I’m not going to talk them down more.
But yes, bringing smaller bills is a good ideas for cars so cheap.
yeah $300 car is rarely worth squabling over but it makes them feel nice to have a bigger stack of bills.
Agreed. I’m not trying to swindle people. I like to try to make everyone happy walking away.
Story time:
When I was starting to get good at bargaining I bought an 84 Dodge Power RAM 50 4x4 (hard enough to find by itself, but it even had the “sport” package) for $260 running and driving. Anyway I felt a little bad after that deal.
Then I destroyed it over a few years, and sold it for $650, running but with a cracked head (about right for a small 4x4 truck here in it’s condition). Had 2 guys wanting to look at it immediately and the first one bought it.
This is how it looked the last day it was mine.
I want it
It was a lot of fun when I actually took it on the trails, and it did surprisingly good hill climbing despite having independent front suspension (probably because it didn’t weigh anything), but I found that I hardly made time to take it out, and that’s why I sold it (I kept driving it long after I knew the head cracked).
Same reason I sold the Jeep, it wasn’t worth keeping when I didn’t want dedicate a whole day to go off-road
Indeed, and that’s why all my cars are street cars now. Have fun on my way to wherever… Guess you could say my S10 could be used off-road, but I won’t be doing that. Probably even going to do an AWD or 2WD swap on it.
A pseudo rally car I could get behind
I may have been looking for CARB compliant superchargers…
