Ive been car shopping for a couple months now with similar requirements to you on the seattle market. kleinbl00 has some good starting advice. I think its super important to understand how much you want to pay lump sum but also to think about how much owning the vehicle will cost you annually. If you buy that used Subaru and you buy a 2014 vs a 2010 your depreciation curve changes pretty significantly. On the other hand maybe you can pick up a used Chevy 1500 or 4 Runner for 5-9k and while the fuel will cost you an extra $700 a year the lack of large depreciation might put you ahead. If you have an amount you are willing to pay approximate cash in hand maybe I can provide more concrete advice beyond the general stuff everyone else is giving you. Car dealers really suck imo. I've visited half a dozen of the last month and they are almost all total assholes. Like sexist, racist condescending a-holes that talk down to you and insult and lie to you for no clear reason or gain. If you buy new Costco prices may be a good way to go. The one good dealer I saw was a costco Mazda dealer. Oh yeah and don’t used True-Car or USAA car buying service. Its shit, they give out your phone number to everyone and you get constant spam from dealers pretending to be sending you personalized emails. Costco does that too but at least its to 1 dealer and not 4-6. Oh btw new cars prices you see online aren't "real" prices. That Tacoma TRD that has an online invoice price of 31K… well after fees, bullshit packages, floor mats etc its 37k +4k in taxes and registration. So closer to 40. If you haggle hard maybe you can get it down to 35.5 but I don’t see them moving much past that.
Yeah, absolutely. Cash in hand I'm okay up to around $4,000. Much more and I'm looking into financing. I'd really like a car I can hold on to for 10 years.I'd be comfortable up to the order of $20,000 with 20%-25% of that as a down payment. Somewhere along those lines. A 2016 Rav4 is a bit above that, but maybe worth it? Another goal is not to have a car payment for more than 4 years. That's you and goob saying fuck used car dealers...fortunately I have a credit union who does as low as 2.24% APR auto loans, not sure how great that is. Need to shop around on the financing.
For 4k Cash you cant buy a vehicle thats worthwhile in the current market. 8-12 you can get a good older vehicle. For about 15 you can get a new hamster car (Kia Soul). Its kind of underpowered but its got a long warranty and it will get you from A-B without much hassle. Personally I would recommend that Mazda CX-5 for 18K that I linked earlier. A 2014 may qualify for a new car rate at BECU and 18K is 10k less than the original owner paid for it 2 years ago. Go to the dealership and drive one around, I thought they rode nice, were pretty comfortable and decent reliability. IMO the RAV isnt worth the price, It wasn’t as comfortable as CX-5, it might be slightly more reliable but for the extra premium it costs you could pay for a whole lot of repairs. Same story for the Honda CRV except its even less comfortable. Off road capability on all the crossovers sucks so if you want the most off-road capable vehicle in its class get an outback or crosstrek. Oh I forgot to mention, WA state will tax you on the KBB value of your vehicle at full tax rate for your country. So you need to budget KBB price * 10%+$300 to register your car. Its a total rip off btw that they tax you multiple times for the same car but nothing you can do about it. For a 20K used car that can be a lot of money because if you only have 4K to put down you really only have 1.5K to put down after taxes and registration.
Consumer Reports will also, for only like $20, give you a report on what the dealers in the area are paying for the car and give you a guesstimate on how much profit they like to make. SUVs can be discounted a lot more. When we bought our Fit we started the negotiation at their cost plus $300 and they talked us up to their cost plus $500.
You can look up "Invoice" online easily. I dont know if that's what you mean by dealers paying because you are a really smart guy and I assume you understand that there is that price + Volume incentives + Holdbacks which is where the 2nd half of the profit comes from. I dont know what consumer reports publishes but I didnt think they made an estimate on total per vehicle profit (maybe they do). Right now the SUV/Truck market is Hot therefore discounting isnt as good as it used to be say in 2010. Depends on the Brand too. Mazda is giving out pretty good deals, Toyota and Honda not so much.