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Negotiating Price On A Is200


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i havent owned many cars before in my life, well, er, 1 to be exact and this was bought from a friend of mine! Im looking to buy an IS200 SE and I believe I have found one on the net that suits me nice...

it is a IS200 SE 2001(Y), manual, 45k miles on the clock, fsh, immaculate condition throughout and is going for £10995. plus, the added bonus of it being only a few miles from my house! parkers guide say about £11370 is the right price, so I am getting a pretty good deal already.

soooo, what I wanted to know is negotiating a price for it if I were seriously considering it (I havent looked round it yet). I have been told that I should offer say £10k to start off with, and then leave my details for him to consider. and then we can come to some agreement once he had thought about it. is this the right way to go?

any help would be appreciated.

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Is it a private sale...then i would go in at around 9500 mark to start negotiation....tell him you will pay cash here and now the smell of fresh notes often seduces sellers :lol: ...no harm...the worst he can do is tell you to :tsktsk: off!! :lol:

good luck mate and get a HPI check done :winky:

Oh another thing set yourself a limit that you are willing to pay for the car....if he wants more then dont worry there are plenty more motors out there B)

Edited by SHAHZ
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sorry mate, i totally forgot to mention it was a private sell, my bad ;)

anyways, thx for the advice shanz.

so what starting offer should i try if it were a dealer? after all, i will be looking round a number of IS200's. and hopefully, by mentioning the fact that I am looking round a number of them, they should **** their pants!

and another quick q while i here, is it pretty essential to get a HPI check? how much do they cost?

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sorry mate, i totally forgot to mention it was a private sell, my bad ;)

anyways, thx for the advice shanz.

so what starting offer should i try if it were a dealer? after all, i will be looking round a number of IS200's. and hopefully, by mentioning the fact that I am looking round a number of them, they should **** their pants!

and another quick q while i here, is it pretty essential to get a HPI check? how much do they cost?

Dealers probably wont knock that much off the price, especially main dealers. The fact that your looking around probably wont bother them because if theve got a decent motor on the forecourt they know that they will sell it if you dont buy it.

If your buying private...then i would say it is very important that you have a HPI check done - you dont want bailifs knocking at the door a month later asking for the keys of your new car cuase it has outstanding finance, or the flip side the car was CAT A right off :crybaby:

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ok, thx for the help! :)

looks like i will be definitely buying a HPI check. I did a bit of research and looks like it will only cost me £40. Is it worth doing this before I go and visit the car? It would mean phoning up the owner and asking for his/her registration plate and (optional) MOT certificate number and VIN mileage number - is this a bit cheeky?

and what about when I go to see the car - is it worth me buying one of those AA checks where some chap comes out to have a look at the car? Or is this being overly-paranoid especially since I will definitely doing a HPI check?

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Go and see the car first if your happy with it then get HPI check done no point wasting money having HPI dine and then when you get there you see a skip!!!

Depends how much you know about motors -- if your unsure about anything get a AA car check done .. i think these will normally include HPI check and will probably cost aroud £150ish

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yeah, good thinking mate, i will have a look before i decide anything.

is it worth doing a HPI check on cars from dealers (not main lexus dealers)? or do most of them include such checks in the price?

edit: any there any other questions that you can think of that I should be asking relating to the private seller?

i am asking about if there are mods on the car, did they buy from new etc...

but any other important ones I should be thinking about?

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i bought mine about a month ago from a garage (not main dealer).

Find as many faults as you can and mention it to the seller.

Mine was up for £10995 ('99 se navigator with 55k on the clock) which I knew was probably the upper limit for it, but I haggled!

I had a thorough look over the car, and noticed both rear tyres were on the limit, so I got him to replace them, the front pads were worn so I got him to replace them. There was a small stonechip on the sill that had caused a bit of rust, so he said he would touch it up, turned out he gave it a complete blowover! so was happy with that.

Also got new MOT and service.

I knocked £500 off the price of the car.

And this was before the issue with the satnav.

The satnav wasnt working, he assured me it was a dodgy disc and would be replaced by sale time.

It wasnt the disc, it was something else (currently being looked at by a LOC Gold Member). And because of this I knocked him down by a further £750, so in total got £1250 off the window price.

I was happy with that so went for the deal, and havent regretted it one bit!

It's a fabulous car to drive, just looking forward to getting the satnav fixed and it'll be complete!

My motto of the story - Find faults and use that to bring down the price!

EVERY car has faults! (some are just harder to find than others)

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ok, i went to see the car. happened to be in fact a dealer sale and not a private sale like i thought...

for the specs please see my first post in this thread.

in fact, it was the first time I have driven an IS200 and I have to say I loved every bit of it! i said to myself to keep calm and act cool whilst the salesman was around, but when i drove it, i started overly-smiling like a little school girl! Really nice feel to clutch and gear change, and is just a tad faster than my current peugoet diesel :P

the car was in mint condition, a couple of scratches on the paintwork but other than that pretty spotless. seemed to drive well, no sign of dodgy gear changes or anything. although i did notice that the area around the brake disc looked a bit rusty, although he said this was 'natural' and he would sort it out if i were to buy it. one thing that i did find strange is that on the vehicle reg document, and on the HPI check, it said the car was a silver colour when in fact it was graphite grey. when taking this up with the salesman, he gave me an exuse which I cant remember now. although, the rest of the HPI check seemed fine. should i be worrying about this?

anyways, he didnt seem that he wanted to go low on price negotiations. after asking how low can he go nearest £10k, he said that he can do it for £10750 with free 1 yr warranty. MOT is until June next year. he dismissed any other offers lower than this. he reckoned he had someone looking round it this friday (and was very interested) but i couldnt tell whether he was bull****ting or not! what should my next move be do you think? ideally, i would like to get more than £250 of the list price, or do you think that i am pushing it?

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Might be worth running the details past your local Lexuss dealer and see what they come up with. I would be a little concerned over the colour issue unless you can get another opinion on it. Does it say import on the V5 ? I'm just thinking a Lexus delaer would know the difference between silver and graphite at first registration.

Do the vin / engine numbers match ....

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