We don't want to buy from a dealer

There are reasons to buy either way. PP can end up with a cheaper price, but a higher risk. Three things to look out for are 1. Stolen car - call the police department and ask them to run the vin FIRST 2. Rollback odometer - get the carfax AND the autocheck reports on that exact car and make sure there are no miles previously recorded HIGHER than the current miles or any repeat numbers e.g. if it was 10k, 22k, 35k, 27k, 52k in that order, then there is something wrong...odometers DO NOT go backwards 3. Get a KSR from a DMV office and make sure the title is NOT salvage. You can get this from carfax/autocheck but i have personally purchased a car with clean reports and it ended up salvage but it was not finalized at the dmv until after i purchased the car. What a nightmare that was. Buying from a dealer can be really good deal especially if you buy stale inventory (dealers often dump cars at a loss or breakeven to avoid too much interest on their line of credit) or buy online and get it done before you go pick it up. If you do go that route, find someone with happy customers using tools like they have here on cargurus.com. Best of luck! Josh

Try using a buying service. Go to the dealership, drive the car you are interested in , get a price. Walk out the door. they will keep you as long as they can .Try Car Intelligent in the bay area - they got me $10,000.00 off a Mercedes Benz. The Los Angeles market is also a good place to ship on line then phone for prices. Any good buying service will return your deposit if they can't find a car at a price you don't want. I do not own , work for nor receive any fee's from Car Intelligent , they did a great job for me. Watch out if the Stock Market continues to fall you will see 0% interest on some models.

Read the car classifieds. Buy a car.easy.

I prefer private party sales. The prices are better and I check out the car myself. If you shop around you can get great deals. Dealers are in the business of deception and they are pros!