u/GetNegotiated

Mods just added me to the verified broker list — appreciate the approval. Wanted to make a proper introduction so the community has the model in front of them, since it differs structurally from the standard dealer-paid broker arrangement and that's worth being upfront about.

## The Model

Negotiated is a flat-fee buyer's-side concierge — paid exclusively by the client, never by the dealer, manufacturer, or lender. No referral fees, no dealer commissions, no spiffs, no volume agreements. The fee is the fee regardless of which dealer the deal lands at, which brand, or whether the client ends up leasing, financing, or paying cash.

That alignment is the entire reason the structure exists. The dealer-paid broker model produces a lot of value in this community — many of the verified brokers here are excellent operators — but the incentive math runs through the dealer. A client-paid concierge's incentive runs through the client: lowest defensible number across whatever dealer set produces it, including dealers I have no relationship with at all. Different model, different position in the transaction. Both have a place; the community should know which one is which.

## Background

Started on the dealership side in F&I before moving to the bank side. Most recently Vice President of Global Regulatory Engagement at Citigroup (Office of the CAO), with earlier compliance roles at Jennison Associates (Prudential), Jefferies, and RBC Capital Markets. The F&I review side of the practice draws on both — dealership finance office mechanics on one side, contract structuring and regulatory compliance on the other.

## Service Menu

Four engagement types, flat fees disclosed upfront, payment due before dealer outreach begins.

- Full Purchase Concierge — $1,000. Multi-dealer remote negotiation, OTD verification, financing buy-rate check, complete F&I contract review, closing coordination, post-signing support.

- Price Negotiation Only — $750. Multi-dealer remote negotiation and OTD verification. F&I review not included — for clients confident in the finance office.

- Pre-Purchase F&I Consultation — $500. Pre-finance-office briefing covering every product on the menu, keep/decline recommendations, MF and APR verification, response scripts for the standard objections.

- F&I Audit (Post-Purchase) — $250. Line-by-line review of the executed contract, cancellable product identification, prorated refund estimates, cancellation request templates.

- Transport Coordination — $250 add-on. Carrier sourcing, insurance verification, dealer pickup, delivery scheduling. Available with any engagement.

Refund mechanics are in the Client Service Agreement — fee fully refundable until first dealer contact on the engagement; vehicle unavailability (sale to another buyer, dealer withdrawal) triggers full refund of the negotiation component. NJ LLC, NJ choice of law, Union County jurisdiction.

## How the Engagement Works

All negotiation conducted remotely — phone, email, dealer portal. No in-person dealership attendance. Client retains all decision authority and signs all documents directly. Two-party consent state recording compliance handled within the engagement (notice provided to dealers in CA, IL, FL, MD, etc., per CSA disclosure).

For lease engagements specifically, the workflow is what this community would expect — pull current program data (MF buy rate, residual, regional incentives, MSDs where the captive supports them, lease cash, loyalty/conquest stacks), benchmark against the achievable numbers established in the relevant program threads, and shop multiple dealers competitively from there. The community's existing program data is the floor, not something I'm trying to recompute from scratch.

For finance and cash engagements, the same multi-dealer competitive structure applies, with rate shopping against the dealer's reserve markup and OTD verification on every line.

## Geographic Footprint

Nationwide. Sourcing tends to favor high-competition coastal corridors (NJ/NY metro, mid-Atlantic, CA, FL) when the client's preference is the absolute lowest number rather than a specific local dealer. Out-of-state purchase logistics — registration, transport, insurance alignment with delivery — are part of the engagement when needed.

Brand-agnostic. No exclusives, no captive incentive structure, no pressure to land a specific OEM.

## What I'm Not

Not a dealer — take no title, not a party to the transaction. Not an attorney, not a licensed financial advisor or insurance producer. F&I review consists of explaining the products in the contract, identifying typical market pricing, and noting cancellation rights — not personalized financial or insurance advice. Client signs all documents directly. These limitations are spelled out in Section 4 of the CSA.

## Community Fit

A meaningful share of this community has the time, program data, and discipline to negotiate the deal independently — and many of you do, well. If you're already grinding the deal yourself with the program in front of you, you don't need me, and I'll tell you that at intake.

The clients who hire me are the ones for whom that's not true: high-opportunity-cost professionals where twenty hours of dealer back-and-forth doesn't pencil, buyers in allocation-constrained situations on hard-to-source vehicles, buyers with credit complications who'd get held in F&I, multi-vehicle households where volume justifies the outside hand, out-of-region purchases where the client wants someone running the dealer side without flying out. If the engagement doesn't make sense for a given client, I tell them at intake.

Will be sharing engagement reviews — existing Google reviews plus deal-data writeups in the LH format — as they come in. Happy to answer questions in this thread or anywhere they come up in the sub.

---

Contact

- Website: www.getnegotiated.com

- Email: info@getnegotiated.com

- Phone: (973) 315-6116

—Metry

I do this for a living on the buyer side, and after the lease post a lot of you asked about trades. The trade is where most of the dealer's gross hides on a new-car deal — frequently more than the front-end gross on the new vehicle itself. If you don't know how to read a trade offer, you've already given up the most negotiable part of the transaction. Four numbers tell you whether you're being held.

Wholesale value. What your car is actually worth at auction this week. The industry standard is the Manheim Market Report (MMR), which dealers subscribe to and consumers can't access directly. The closest public proxy: instant cash offers from Carvana, Carmax, and CarGurus. These are real bids — they will write you a check at that price — and they're competing in the same wholesale market as your dealer. Get all three before you walk into the showroom. Save the screenshots. The highest one is your floor.

Reconditioning estimate (recon). What the dealer has to spend to make your car frontline-ready: tires, brakes, mechanical, cosmetic, certification, detail. Typical $500–$2,000 on a clean trade; $3,000+ on a rough one. Recon is legitimate — the dealer can't retail your car at full retail without doing the work. The question is whether the recon estimate matches your car's actual condition. Inflated recon is one of the primary tools used to justify a low trade offer. If you've maintained the car well, ask for the recon figure as a line item and challenge anything you don't recognize.

Trade allowance. The number on the deal as your trade value. This is NOT the same as ACV (the dealer's internal "actual cash value" — what they actually think the car is worth). The dealer can put any allowance on paper as long as the deal math works. Common move: inflate the trade allowance by $1,500 and inflate the vehicle selling price by $1,500. Net to you: zero. Feel: you "won." Always negotiate the new vehicle price first, separately, as if you have no trade. Get that price in writing. Then plug your trade in as a discrete line item.

Your loan payoff. What you owe today — call your lender for the 10-day payoff, not the statement balance. Equity = Trade allowance − Payoff. Positive equity is yours. Negative equity goes somewhere, and that somewhere is almost always rolled into your next loan — meaning you finance the old car's depreciation through the new car's term, and you're upside-down on the new loan from day one. Know this number cold before you sit down.

The math, for people who want to check:

Dealer's spread on the trade = Wholesale − Recon − Trade allowance

A reasonable wholesale-to-retail margin on a clean trade is roughly $1,000–$2,000. If the spread is meaningfully wider than that, you're being held.

Equity = Trade allowance − Payoff. Every $1,000 of negative equity rolled into a 60-month loan at 8% adds roughly $20/month for the life of the new loan, with the old car's depreciation baked into a longer term than the original.

The shortcut test when you don't have time for math: get instant cash offers from Carvana, Carmax, and CarGurus before you set foot in the showroom. Take screenshots. Then ask the dealer for two numbers on the deal — (1) selling price of the new vehicle as if you have no trade, and (2) trade allowance as a discrete line item. Compare allowance to your highest instant offer. If the dealer is meaningfully below it on the same condition, either they match or you sell to the instant offer and come back to buy the new car as a cash-out-the-door deal.

If the dealer refuses to separate the trade from the new vehicle price, refuses to give the trade allowance as a discrete line item, or insists on quoting only "the difference" — walk. That structure exists for one reason: to hide which side of the deal the gross is on. You can't shop a "difference" against another dealer. You can shop the two numbers.

Disclosure: I run a flat-fee buyer's-side concierge in NJ — paid by the client, never by the dealer. Posting this because the trade is the single biggest source of confusion in the "did I get a good deal" posts, and most of them would resolve in 30 seconds with a wholesale benchmark in hand.

I do this for a living on the buyer side, and after the lease post a lot of you asked about trades. The trade is where most of the dealer's gross hides on a new-car deal — frequently more than the front-end gross on the new vehicle itself. If you don't know how to read a trade offer, you've already given up the most negotiable part of the transaction. Four numbers tell you whether you're being held.

Wholesale value. What your car is actually worth at auction this week. The industry standard is the Manheim Market Report (MMR), which dealers subscribe to and consumers can't access directly. The closest public proxy: instant cash offers from Carvana, Carmax, and CarGurus. These are real bids — they will write you a check at that price — and they're competing in the same wholesale market as your dealer. Get all three before you walk into the showroom. Save the screenshots. The highest one is your floor.

Reconditioning estimate (recon). What the dealer has to spend to make your car frontline-ready: tires, brakes, mechanical, cosmetic, certification, detail. Typical $500–$2,000 on a clean trade; $3,000+ on a rough one. Recon is legitimate — the dealer can't retail your car at full retail without doing the work. The question is whether the recon estimate matches your car's actual condition. Inflated recon is one of the primary tools used to justify a low trade offer. If you've maintained the car well, ask for the recon figure as a line item and challenge anything you don't recognize.

Trade allowance. The number on the deal as your trade value. This is NOT the same as ACV (the dealer's internal "actual cash value" — what they actually think the car is worth). The dealer can put any allowance on paper as long as the deal math works. Common move: inflate the trade allowance by $1,500 and inflate the vehicle selling price by $1,500. Net to you: zero. Feel: you "won." Always negotiate the new vehicle price first, separately, as if you have no trade. Get that price in writing. Then plug your trade in as a discrete line item.

Your loan payoff. What you owe today — call your lender for the 10-day payoff, not the statement balance. Equity = Trade allowance − Payoff. Positive equity is yours. Negative equity goes somewhere, and that somewhere is almost always rolled into your next loan — meaning you finance the old car's depreciation through the new car's term, and you're upside-down on the new loan from day one. Know this number cold before you sit down.

The math, for people who want to check:

Dealer's spread on the trade = Wholesale − Recon − Trade allowance

A reasonable wholesale-to-retail margin on a clean trade is roughly $1,000–$2,000. If the spread is meaningfully wider than that, you're being held.

Equity = Trade allowance − Payoff. Every $1,000 of negative equity rolled into a 60-month loan at 8% adds roughly $20/month for the life of the new loan, with the old car's depreciation baked into a longer term than the original.

The shortcut test when you don't have time for math: get instant cash offers from Carvana, Carmax, and CarGurus before you set foot in the showroom. Take screenshots. Then ask the dealer for two numbers on the deal — (1) selling price of the new vehicle as if you have no trade, and (2) trade allowance as a discrete line item. Compare allowance to your highest instant offer. If the dealer is meaningfully below it on the same condition, either they match or you sell to the instant offer and come back to buy the new car as a cash-out-the-door deal.

If the dealer refuses to separate the trade from the new vehicle price, refuses to give the trade allowance as a discrete line item, or insists on quoting only "the difference" — walk. That structure exists for one reason: to hide which side of the deal the gross is on. You can't shop a "difference" against another dealer. You can shop the two numbers.

Disclosure: I run a flat-fee buyer's-side concierge in NJ — paid by the client, never by the dealer. Posting this because the trade is the single biggest source of confusion in the "did I get a good deal" posts, and most of them would resolve in 30 seconds with a wholesale benchmark in hand.

I do this for a living on the buyer side, and after the lease post a lot of you asked about trades. The trade is where most of the dealer's gross hides on a new-car deal — frequently more than the front-end gross on the new vehicle itself. If you don't know how to read a trade offer, you've already given up the most negotiable part of the transaction. Four numbers tell you whether you're being held.

Wholesale value. What your car is actually worth at auction this week. The industry standard is the Manheim Market Report (MMR), which dealers subscribe to and consumers can't access directly. The closest public proxy: instant cash offers from Carvana, Carmax, and CarGurus. These are real bids — they will write you a check at that price — and they're competing in the same wholesale market as your dealer. Get all three before you walk into the showroom. Save the screenshots. The highest one is your floor.

Reconditioning estimate (recon). What the dealer has to spend to make your car frontline-ready: tires, brakes, mechanical, cosmetic, certification, detail. Typical $500–$2,000 on a clean trade; $3,000+ on a rough one. Recon is legitimate — the dealer can't retail your car at full retail without doing the work. The question is whether the recon estimate matches your car's actual condition. Inflated recon is one of the primary tools used to justify a low trade offer. If you've maintained the car well, ask for the recon figure as a line item and challenge anything you don't recognize.

Trade allowance. The number on the deal as your trade value. This is NOT the same as ACV (the dealer's internal "actual cash value" — what they actually think the car is worth). The dealer can put any allowance on paper as long as the deal math works. Common move: inflate the trade allowance by $1,500 and inflate the vehicle selling price by $1,500. Net to you: zero. Feel: you "won." Always negotiate the new vehicle price first, separately, as if you have no trade. Get that price in writing. Then plug your trade in as a discrete line item.

Your loan payoff. What you owe today — call your lender for the 10-day payoff, not the statement balance. Equity = Trade allowance − Payoff. Positive equity is yours. Negative equity goes somewhere, and that somewhere is almost always rolled into your next loan — meaning you finance the old car's depreciation through the new car's term, and you're upside-down on the new loan from day one. Know this number cold before you sit down.

The math, for people who want to check:

Dealer's spread on the trade = Wholesale − Recon − Trade allowance

A reasonable wholesale-to-retail margin on a clean trade is roughly $1,000–$2,000. If the spread is meaningfully wider than that, you're being held.

Equity = Trade allowance − Payoff. Every $1,000 of negative equity rolled into a 60-month loan at 8% adds roughly $20/month for the life of the new loan, with the old car's depreciation baked into a longer term than the original.

The shortcut test when you don't have time for math: get instant cash offers from Carvana, Carmax, and CarGurus before you set foot in the showroom. Take screenshots. Then ask the dealer for two numbers on the deal — (1) selling price of the new vehicle as if you have no trade, and (2) trade allowance as a discrete line item. Compare allowance to your highest instant offer. If the dealer is meaningfully below it on the same condition, either they match or you sell to the instant offer and come back to buy the new car as a cash-out-the-door deal.

If the dealer refuses to separate the trade from the new vehicle price, refuses to give the trade allowance as a discrete line item, or insists on quoting only "the difference" — walk. That structure exists for one reason: to hide which side of the deal the gross is on. You can't shop a "difference" against another dealer. You can shop the two numbers.

Disclosure: I run a flat-fee buyer's-side concierge in NJ — paid by the client, never by the dealer. Posting this because the trade is the single biggest source of confusion in the "did I get a good deal" posts, and most of them would resolve in 30 seconds with a wholesale benchmark in hand.

I do this for a living on the buyer side, and after the lease post a lot of you asked about trades. The trade is where most of the dealer's gross hides on a new-car deal — frequently more than the front-end gross on the new vehicle itself. If you don't know how to read a trade offer, you've already given up the most negotiable part of the transaction. Four numbers tell you whether you're being held.

Wholesale value. What your car is actually worth at auction this week. The industry standard is the Manheim Market Report (MMR), which dealers subscribe to and consumers can't access directly. The closest public proxy: instant cash offers from Carvana, Carmax, and CarGurus. These are real bids — they will write you a check at that price — and they're competing in the same wholesale market as your dealer. Get all three before you walk into the showroom. Save the screenshots. The highest one is your floor.

Reconditioning estimate (recon). What the dealer has to spend to make your car frontline-ready: tires, brakes, mechanical, cosmetic, certification, detail. Typical $500–$2,000 on a clean trade; $3,000+ on a rough one. Recon is legitimate — the dealer can't retail your car at full retail without doing the work. The question is whether the recon estimate matches your car's actual condition. Inflated recon is one of the primary tools used to justify a low trade offer. If you've maintained the car well, ask for the recon figure as a line item and challenge anything you don't recognize.

Trade allowance. The number on the deal as your trade value. This is NOT the same as ACV (the dealer's internal "actual cash value" — what they actually think the car is worth). The dealer can put any allowance on paper as long as the deal math works. Common move: inflate the trade allowance by $1,500 and inflate the vehicle selling price by $1,500. Net to you: zero. Feel: you "won." Always negotiate the new vehicle price first, separately, as if you have no trade. Get that price in writing. Then plug your trade in as a discrete line item.

Your loan payoff. What you owe today — call your lender for the 10-day payoff, not the statement balance. Equity = Trade allowance − Payoff. Positive equity is yours. Negative equity goes somewhere, and that somewhere is almost always rolled into your next loan — meaning you finance the old car's depreciation through the new car's term, and you're upside-down on the new loan from day one. Know this number cold before you sit down.

The math, for people who want to check:

Dealer's spread on the trade = Wholesale − Recon − Trade allowance

A reasonable wholesale-to-retail margin on a clean trade is roughly $1,000–$2,000. If the spread is meaningfully wider than that, you're being held.

Equity = Trade allowance − Payoff. Every $1,000 of negative equity rolled into a 60-month loan at 8% adds roughly $20/month for the life of the new loan, with the old car's depreciation baked into a longer term than the original.

The shortcut test when you don't have time for math: get instant cash offers from Carvana, Carmax, and CarGurus before you set foot in the showroom. Take screenshots. Then ask the dealer for two numbers on the deal — (1) selling price of the new vehicle as if you have no trade, and (2) trade allowance as a discrete line item. Compare allowance to your highest instant offer. If the dealer is meaningfully below it on the same condition, either they match or you sell to the instant offer and come back to buy the new car as a cash-out-the-door deal.

If the dealer refuses to separate the trade from the new vehicle price, refuses to give the trade allowance as a discrete line item, or insists on quoting only "the difference" — walk. That structure exists for one reason: to hide which side of the deal the gross is on. You can't shop a "difference" against another dealer. You can shop the two numbers.

Disclosure: I run a flat-fee buyer's-side concierge in NJ — paid by the client, never by the dealer. Posting this because the trade is the single biggest source of confusion in the "did I get a good deal" posts, and most of them would resolve in 30 seconds with a wholesale benchmark in hand.

I do this for a living on the buyer side, and after the lease post a lot of you asked about trades. The trade is where most of the dealer's gross hides on a new-car deal — frequently more than the front-end gross on the new vehicle itself. If you don't know how to read a trade offer, you've already given up the most negotiable part of the transaction. Four numbers tell you whether you're being held.

Wholesale value. What your car is actually worth at auction this week. The industry standard is the Manheim Market Report (MMR), which dealers subscribe to and consumers can't access directly. The closest public proxy: instant cash offers from Carvana, Carmax, and CarGurus. These are real bids — they will write you a check at that price — and they're competing in the same wholesale market as your dealer. Get all three before you walk into the showroom. Save the screenshots. The highest one is your floor.

Reconditioning estimate (recon). What the dealer has to spend to make your car frontline-ready: tires, brakes, mechanical, cosmetic, certification, detail. Typical $500–$2,000 on a clean trade; $3,000+ on a rough one. Recon is legitimate — the dealer can't retail your car at full retail without doing the work. The question is whether the recon estimate matches your car's actual condition. Inflated recon is one of the primary tools used to justify a low trade offer. If you've maintained the car well, ask for the recon figure as a line item and challenge anything you don't recognize.

Trade allowance. The number on the deal as your trade value. This is NOT the same as ACV (the dealer's internal "actual cash value" — what they actually think the car is worth). The dealer can put any allowance on paper as long as the deal math works. Common move: inflate the trade allowance by $1,500 and inflate the vehicle selling price by $1,500. Net to you: zero. Feel: you "won." Always negotiate the new vehicle price first, separately, as if you have no trade. Get that price in writing. Then plug your trade in as a discrete line item.

Your loan payoff. What you owe today — call your lender for the 10-day payoff, not the statement balance. Equity = Trade allowance − Payoff. Positive equity is yours. Negative equity goes somewhere, and that somewhere is almost always rolled into your next loan — meaning you finance the old car's depreciation through the new car's term, and you're upside-down on the new loan from day one. Know this number cold before you sit down.

The math, for people who want to check:

Dealer's spread on the trade = Wholesale − Recon − Trade allowance

A reasonable wholesale-to-retail margin on a clean trade is roughly $1,000–$2,000. If the spread is meaningfully wider than that, you're being held.

Equity = Trade allowance − Payoff. Every $1,000 of negative equity rolled into a 60-month loan at 8% adds roughly $20/month for the life of the new loan, with the old car's depreciation baked into a longer term than the original.

The shortcut test when you don't have time for math: get instant cash offers from Carvana, Carmax, and CarGurus before you set foot in the showroom. Take screenshots. Then ask the dealer for two numbers on the deal — (1) selling price of the new vehicle as if you have no trade, and (2) trade allowance as a discrete line item. Compare allowance to your highest instant offer. If the dealer is meaningfully below it on the same condition, either they match or you sell to the instant offer and come back to buy the new car as a cash-out-the-door deal.

If the dealer refuses to separate the trade from the new vehicle price, refuses to give the trade allowance as a discrete line item, or insists on quoting only "the difference" — walk. That structure exists for one reason: to hide which side of the deal the gross is on. You can't shop a "difference" against another dealer. You can shop the two numbers.

Disclosure: I run a flat-fee buyer's-side concierge in NJ — paid by the client, never by the dealer. Posting this because the trade is the single biggest source of confusion in the "did I get a good deal" posts, and most of them would resolve in 30 seconds with a wholesale benchmark in hand.

I do this for a living on the buyer side, and after the lease post a lot of you asked about trades. The trade is where most of the dealer's gross hides on a new-car deal — frequently more than the front-end gross on the new vehicle itself. If you don't know how to read a trade offer, you've already given up the most negotiable part of the transaction. Four numbers tell you whether you're being held.

Wholesale value. What your car is actually worth at auction this week. The industry standard is the Manheim Market Report (MMR), which dealers subscribe to and consumers can't access directly. The closest public proxy: instant cash offers from Carvana, Carmax, and CarGurus. These are real bids — they will write you a check at that price — and they're competing in the same wholesale market as your dealer. Get all three before you walk into the showroom. Save the screenshots. The highest one is your floor.

Reconditioning estimate (recon). What the dealer has to spend to make your car frontline-ready: tires, brakes, mechanical, cosmetic, certification, detail. Typical $500–$2,000 on a clean trade; $3,000+ on a rough one. Recon is legitimate — the dealer can't retail your car at full retail without doing the work. The question is whether the recon estimate matches your car's actual condition. Inflated recon is one of the primary tools used to justify a low trade offer. If you've maintained the car well, ask for the recon figure as a line item and challenge anything you don't recognize.

Trade allowance. The number on the deal as your trade value. This is NOT the same as ACV (the dealer's internal "actual cash value" — what they actually think the car is worth). The dealer can put any allowance on paper as long as the deal math works. Common move: inflate the trade allowance by $1,500 and inflate the vehicle selling price by $1,500. Net to you: zero. Feel: you "won." Always negotiate the new vehicle price first, separately, as if you have no trade. Get that price in writing. Then plug your trade in as a discrete line item.

Your loan payoff. What you owe today — call your lender for the 10-day payoff, not the statement balance. Equity = Trade allowance − Payoff. Positive equity is yours. Negative equity goes somewhere, and that somewhere is almost always rolled into your next loan — meaning you finance the old car's depreciation through the new car's term, and you're upside-down on the new loan from day one. Know this number cold before you sit down.

The math, for people who want to check:

Dealer's spread on the trade = Wholesale − Recon − Trade allowance

A reasonable wholesale-to-retail margin on a clean trade is roughly $1,000–$2,000. If the spread is meaningfully wider than that, you're being held.

Equity = Trade allowance − Payoff. Every $1,000 of negative equity rolled into a 60-month loan at 8% adds roughly $20/month for the life of the new loan, with the old car's depreciation baked into a longer term than the original.

The shortcut test when you don't have time for math: get instant cash offers from Carvana, Carmax, and CarGurus before you set foot in the showroom. Take screenshots. Then ask the dealer for two numbers on the deal — (1) selling price of the new vehicle as if you have no trade, and (2) trade allowance as a discrete line item. Compare allowance to your highest instant offer. If the dealer is meaningfully below it on the same condition, either they match or you sell to the instant offer and come back to buy the new car as a cash-out-the-door deal.

If the dealer refuses to separate the trade from the new vehicle price, refuses to give the trade allowance as a discrete line item, or insists on quoting only "the difference" — walk. That structure exists for one reason: to hide which side of the deal the gross is on. You can't shop a "difference" against another dealer. You can shop the two numbers.

Disclosure: I run a flat-fee buyer's-side concierge in NJ — paid by the client, never by the dealer. Posting this because the trade is the single biggest source of confusion in the "did I get a good deal" posts, and most of them would resolve in 30 seconds with a wholesale benchmark in hand.