Rxhopeful

Hello, everyone,

I am getting very close to purchasing a 2013 RX350! I wanted to get a sense from this board whether most of you who finance do so through your own bank/credit union or if you get better deals through Lexus Financial. My experience has been that most of the time your credit union is better to deal with, plus, once you have the financing taken care of you might be in a better position to negotiate. Any truth to that? Was just curious on the varying schools of thought.

Thanks in advance for the input!

ecr72

I always try to keep the price negotiation and financing as separate as possible. I also don't like to show my hand regarding financing until we work on a price for the vehicle. If I do anything, I will hint that we will go through the dealers financing so they may be more willing to go lower on the price if they think there is something to be made on the back end. If you have good credit and there's a special APR, this tactic doesn't work so well.

As for the actual financing, I prefer to go through the dealer if they can offer as good or better than an external financial institution. Our last purchase we were pre-approved by our bank and I had it in writing with me when we went to discuss price. Once I agreed on a price, they were writing everything up at 3.99 or 4.99%. I told them they could match my rate or write it up as an "either,or" which means I would have 5 days to either bring in a check from my bank, or default to their financing. Very standard practice in my experience. They ended up matching my rate.

As for who is easier to deal with, I've never had a problem dealing with a financial institution on an installment loan. There's a rate, term and payment. As long as there is no prepayment penalty, I could care less if I'm sending my payment to Lexus, Chase, or a credit union. What I like about just going through the dealer is less hassle. To steal from VW, it's sign and drive. Not, sign and deal with more steps in the following days to complete the transaction.

JRey350hou

With good credit...Lexus is giving $ 1000 incentive if Financed through LFS( LEXUS FINANCIAL SERV) and rate is 1.9% on36,48 or 60 mo. Ipurch in mid Nov and did 36 mos with planning to pay in 24 mos or less. I just saw with my Credit Union new car rate --24 months @ 1.49, not much difference but still save another$ 150-180.00 in interest that was already very good. Any event i called LFS and said there wasnt any duration that the loan had to stay with them, they were very helpful and already gave me payoff to provide to credit union. Just have to decide whether I want to make change to credit union. Hope that helps in your decision, try to get 1000 incentive at 1.9 then you can always refinance to Credit Union. good luck

Scott1258

Hey JRey,

Do you know if the $1,000 incentive for financing is on top of the current loyalty discount or is it one or the other? In other words is it possible to get a total of a $2,000 discount for both loyalty and doing the financing through Lexus? thanks!

JRey350hou

No, one or the other, this was brought up early on as I dealt with Sales Mgr only initially over ph/email since I preferred to do repeat business with Lexus dealer in Dallas although I live in Houston suburbs. I was able to get very agrresive deal imo.

Rxhopeful

Thanks for the JRey for the info. I see you're from Houston (my hometown). I live in Dallas now. Did you buy from Sewell in Dallas by chance?

AconRX

If you are already pre-approved by your credit union I would print this out and use this a leverage tool to negotiate. When I bought my CPO '10 RX 350 last month the dealer said the lowest he could get with Lexus Finance was 2.99% so I showed him the pre-approval I had from my credit union at 1.49% and he lowered the price a bit more. Right now I'm in the middle of refinancing the loan with my credit union to lower my monthly as well so I'm looking at $1,500 in savings over the 5 yr loan period from what I originally had.

dctex99

Interesting that someone from CA mentioned a Chase car loan; our Chase bank does not do car loans nor do most banks; Credit unions rule but are very competitive on rates! Remember every 1/100 of a per cent means a lot in a loan; my business just refinanced a 6 million dollar loan from 5.42 to 4%; reducing the payment from over $33,000 to $20,000......so deal for every bit you can!!

ecr72

That would be me. I never went into the branch. I applied online and received instant pre-approval for what I requested, a $30K loan. I printed that out and took it with us. I never tried to close the loan but someone from the local branch did call to follow up and ask if we had any questions. You may want to check again because it's advertised right on their website and if there was a CA exemption I would think they would not allow me to pre-approve or would have mentioned it during the follow-up phone call. The rates are not spectacular but it got us what we needed (a pre-approval) so we could shop without worrying about the financing.

Evitzee

Sales and finance are separate departments, the way you are going to pay for the vehicle should not be a factor in negotiating the price. When you sit down with the finance guy see what the best offer they have....it's not always LFS. They have access to all kinds of loans, banks, CU's, etc. Obviously you should know what your normal FICO score is before you walk in there (go online to myFico and buy it, make sure it is real FICO score). You can line up your own loan before going in, but you won't necessarily get the best by yourself.

kitlz

I lined up financing beforehand through my bank, Chase. For some reason they gave me a hard time when I tried to pick up the check the day I was taking delivery. I didn't want to waste another minute after waiting four months for my RX. So I drove to the dealer and wound up financing through them. Bank of America came back with the best rate. It was half a percent below what Chase quoted me. And to add to the absurdity, my previous loans through the dealer were with Chase

So make sure you shop around but don't rule out the dealer for financing.

JRey350hou

yes i did.