Is it better to buy a vehicle from a dealer before New Years or after?

I’ve always heard it’s best to buy at the end of a month as they’re trying to meet numbers goals.

Now if buying for tax reasons.

Further into model year is better if just casually shopping.

The good sales guys are on vaca. The hungry or bad sales guys are working.

Determine if they are hungry or incompetent.

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If you are able to hold off buying a vehicle for a while you will be better off for it. Dealers are so far upside down on their floor-plans they are not willing to deal at all and still holding to their ridiculous markups. Give them another 6 months and that will change as they start looking at more and more floorplan repos being pulled from their lots.

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WTF???? This is all wrong. OP, it’s always best to buy at the end of the month. It’s hard to know what programs may be going on, sometimes programs will run a quarter. If you can catch the end of one of those, you can get the best deal. In general, wind of the month is best. And most of the responses in this thread are nonsense.

Before. End of month, end of quarter, end of year.

Not a gimmick at EOY. Manufacturers run customer cash incentives etc that dealers can pass on to the customer. Typically the programs end at the new year. In other words, it’s possible a dealer can give you a better deal today than they can on the same vehicle next week. It’s not them deciding to screw you all of the sudden because it’s a new year, they simply aren’t getting the same incentive offering from the manufacturer anymore. Of course this is all based on the incentive program rules and doesn’t necessarily apply to all vehicle types.

Most years, right now would be the best time.. but this particular year, the consensus is that prices on vehicles will come WAY down in 2024… then again , folks have been saying that for three years now.

It is not rocket science. You can squeeze the dealer for trade appraisal value right now, and likely get some off of addendum or MSRP, or both. The dealerships wants to pad the numbers as much as they can. In Texas, they are only allowed to be open 6 days a week. It is a $10,000 fine to open a 7th. Many are paying that fine to be open on Sunday. What does that tell you? They want to pad the numbers. Use these last 3 days and save thousands, even on Toyotas and Hondas.

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Before. End of month, end of quarter, end of year.

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This.

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this guy is saying the used car market is starting to collapse (using Carmax data and some interesting "time on market" metrics) and it's going to get worse over the next 60-90 days

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Saw that vid a couple days ago.. good news for me personally since i had planned to pull the trigger on a new (new to me) vehicle in late January, approx one month from now.. but i think i will wait to February to see if prices come down more.. problem is , i dont want to wait too long, lest my current vehicle has any more problems and costs me any money while im waiting .. it’s a balancing act .