New wheels

Well, in "hopes/dreams/plans" post from last week I said that my plans for last week and this month included cleaning out my pantry (and organizing it), and buying a second car.  We did succeed at one of them.... and let's just say that my pantry is still a mess.

Yep, we found a car for Garrett!  Here's the story.

We had been searching for a car pretty diligently for about 6-7 weeks.  There are so many steps to buying a used car: contacting the seller, going to look at it, driving it around, buying the Carfax report.. and if that all checks out, taking it to get a third party inspection (of course this is not all required, but Garrett is very cautious and it's a huge purchase, so we decided that paying $120 to get an inspection was worth the peace of mind to ensure we wouldn't buy a lemon.).

Many cars for sale around here are in Virginia Beach, which is about 25 minutes away, so that added to the hassle.  It was also really difficult for us to get a decent loan.  Of course, we would have loved to pay cash but we really needed to get a car, and we just couldn't wait long enough to save up the money.  Our bank was advertising 3.9% car loans, so we applied for that, but we didn't qualify because of Garrett's student loans.  We also applied for a physician loan, but Garrett didn't qualify for that either because apparently he doesn't have sufficient credit history (I guess paying off your credit card on time every month for 6 years doesn't count??).

So, we went to dealerships and told them what we could pay  - X amount for no more than 42 months.  Many could work with us on the "x" amount per month, but the payments were 60 or even 72 months, even with our substantial down payment.  No thanks!! It's amazing when you can end up spending on a car when you add up all the monthly payments.  We calculated the payments that one dealership offered and when all was said and done, we would have ended up paying twice as much as our original car budget.  So we tried and tried (and prayed and prayed) to get a private loan so that we could go into a dealership and say, "we already have the cash, so just work with us on the final price" instead of working on the monthly payments.  Finally we secured a great loan with the best interest rate we could find.  This also gave us the option to look at private sales.

We were looking for a Toyota sedan.  Hoping for a Camry, but willing to look at the Corolla (smaller).  The car is mainly just for Garrett to commute to work, but we also wanted the option of putting the carseats in the back and using it for longer trips, or just as a back-up car.  We were looking in the 2005-2006 range, but even then the cars were a little out of our price range and most had pretty high miles (over 100k).

At times it felt like maybe we were asking for too much.  We started looking at '03's but again, the mileage on those cars was just so high.  We finally decided on a firm price that we would offer for any car that we found, and kept looking.  Last Wednesday night, after a particularly stressful day of looking online and making phone calls, we decided that we'd put the car searching on hold since we had a really busy weekend ahead of us.

That night I couldn't sleep, so I decided to get up and work on some posts for my other blog.  I randomly decided to pull up Craigslist and see if any cars had been listed in the last hour.  Interestingly, someone had just posted a Corolla for sale.  It was a 2008, but it was priced exactly what we had decided our firm price would be.  It was borderline sketchy, though... only 20k miles on it.  And a 2008 for that price?  It was easily $2k under blue book, maybe even 3k under.  Even the color was nice (white/gold-ish). I tried not to get too excited.  The seller left a phone number on the ad, and of course I couldn't call him in the middle of the night, so I went to bed.

I couldn't sleep at all that night.  I wanted to wake Garrett up and say, "I found our car!!"  I knew that lots of people would be calling the seller the next day, and I knew that we had to act very fast.


Early the next morning I told Garrett what I had found.  Of course, when I told him the price he said, What's wrong with it?  I finally convinced him to call the guy just after 7 a.m., but he didn't answer the phone so Garrett left a message.

Garrett tried all day to get a hold of him, and finally around 4pm the guy answered his phone.  He told Garrett that at least 30 people had called about the car, and that he would be showing it the next day.  Garrett hung up the phone and told me the news, but I knew we couldn't wait.  Call him back, I insisted, and tell him that we will buy this car if it's what he says it is.  Ask him if you can see it tonight.


So, thanks to my nagging, Garrett called him back and convinced him to let us see the car that night (we only live about 5 miles away from him).

To make a long story even longer.... Garrett test drove the car that night and loved it.  It turns out that it's so cheap because the car was originally stolen last year.  The owner claimed the insurance on the car (making it a "total loss" car), and after the insurance company paid the person, the car was recovered.  So, the insurance company then owned the car.  The guy we bought it from is licensed to buy cars from insurance companies and resell them to the public.  It all still sounded a little sketchy to us so we bought the Carfax (and called the DMV, and our insurance company) and everything in his story checked out.  We read up on the internet about buying "total loss" cars and apparently it's a pretty popular way to get nice cars at a great price. Early the next morning I took the car in for an inspection.  Just as the seller promised, the car was in perfect shape.  Everything was original (except for the new tires), everything was in mint condition.  It looks (and drives) brand new.  Just as you would expect from a car with only 20k miles. :)

So, we are very excited to finally have two cars again.  We are so thankful.  And, I'll admit that I'm excited to own a Toyota.  We are not "car people" by any means (we don't really care what our cars look like), but I am a bit of a "Consumer Reports" snob so I've been wanting a Toyota for years.  We need the reliability.  Too bad the U.S. doesn't make cars like that.

So, thank you Japan, for the Corolla.

(Now, somebody please steal a brand new Highlander so I can buy it when it gets recovered.  Thanks.)