Perhaps pointless to ask, CarMax says they'd give me $40,400 ... I know I won't get that from a dealer trade-in, just wondering if anyone has recently gotten there's appraised at a dealer for trade-in. I figure I may as well kick some tires and possibly take advantage of the current market. I'll likely be going down-market ... passed a Honda dealer and a white Passport with black wheels was looking mighty fine. I likely won't have time to actually go to a dealer to ask until Wednesday at the earliest. EX-L in white is just over $39k, wonder if they'd just swap the black wheels from one of the Sport models they have on the lot, lol.

 

I've been successful in getting a dealer to give me what CarMax has offered, when I show them the quote from CarMax...IF I haven't already negotiated the same or higher value. I reason with them: "If I can drive into CarMax, and drive out with a check for $XX,xxx, you can take the same car over there and get the same amount". I always do this when preparing to trade in a vehicle.

In AZ, we only pay sales tax on the difference between the trade-in value and the new car purchase price, so I almost never sell to CarMax.

 

Recently went through a similar scenario with different vehicles - trade in accord, new vehicle stinger. The kia dealer offered what the car was worth precovid. Carmax offered 5K more. New car price was still below msrp so the deal was worthwhile, but had to be two separate transactions. A bit of inconvenience too - new dealer 60 miles away. The nazi's in IL now limit tax credit to the first $10K of tradein value. Anything above that is taxable (as of 1/1/2020).

Impression I got from the kia dealer was they didn't want the car (2015 w/27K EXL trim). Their lot had a fair number of new cars and a handful of used. Used were mostly 2019 and newer.

 

Definitely agree with this and can easily add up to be a whole lot of savings. ex - $39K for the Passport purchased outright @ 5% sales tax is $1950 vs potentially paying zip by trading in the RDX. Just something to think about and obviously this may vary state to state.

 

Went to one dealer and they wouldn't come close to CarMax. They would have done a straight trade with an AWD Sport, but nothing higher. It would honestly have made more sense to sell the car to CarMax and pay the 4% sales tax as the dealer wouldn't even get close enough to make that a wash. Doing more research, the ZF9 still seems to be hit and miss and also found folks with dash rattles in their nearly brand new Passport's. Mechanically, my car works flawlessly, so I won't take a chance on possibly getting one of the problematic transmissions while still having a car with poor interior build quality ... after all, they're all built the same way, regardless of badge on the front.

 

In my experience CarMax was the lowest offer comparing to 3 other dealers. Nice that they give you a printed offer, though.

 

It's all over the place here (PA near Philly). CarMax has been both significantly higher 5% than dealer offers and 5% below dealer offers on cars we have traded. It's easy so I always check.

Example: I traded my Civic with 168k to the dealer over CarMax. Traded the Mazda 3 with 60k to the CarMax over the dealer. The pricing is all over the place so you just have to check.