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Buying Advice
Buying a Used Car
A number of Chinese want to buy a used car after living here for a while. Here is some general advice. For specific questions and help, contact Tom Lindstrom at
. You can also see the PowerPoint to his car buying seminar here.
1) To figure out what a used car should cost approximately, I recommend you go to
www.edmunds.com. You can look up any make and year of car within the last 10 years. It will give you the average retail price (what a dealer will likely sell it for), and wholesale/trade in price (what a dealer will pay to get the car). If you buy from a dealer, you would not want to pay over the average retail price, and if you buy from an individual, you should expect to pay IN BETWEEN the wholesale and retail price. (In America, negotiating the price of a car is normal.)
This web site will also tell you how to adjust the price according to high and low mileage on a car and extra features a car might have. (Also keep in mind that whether you buy a car from a dealer or an individual, you will also need to pay 6.5% tax plus annual registration fee, and you are required to purchase insurance.)
They have other helpful information at this site also. A different web site for looking up prices is
www.kbb.com, which is mainly helpful when you have seen a specific car and you want to check the average price for it in the Midwest region.
2) Before you finalize purchasing a car, ALWAYS have a mechanic inspect it first. You have to pay $40 to $125 to do this, but it is well worth it, especially if you are going to be spending at least $1000 on a car! I know a local Chinese who paid $2500 for a Honda, did not have it inspected, and a month later the engine caught fire and she lost all her invested money! If the mechanic finds major problems, you will not want to buy it and if there are medium expensive problems, you can usually renegotiate the price. (However, all used cars will have some small problems and you will not want to worry about those too much.) A seller should agree to have a car inspected before completing the sale. If they do not agree, I would not buy it from them.
3) To look for a car, you can check the newspaper classified ads ( www.startribune.com and
www.pioneerpress.com) and also these web sites:
www.autotrader.com and
www.carsoup.com.
Buying Used Furniture
Most of the apartments near the University of Minnesota have no furniture at all in them. In this area, new furniture is very expensive but used furniture is very cheap. Click here for a PDF format list of stores and recommendations for finding used furniture. |
COM-TC
8/4/2005
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