I have been looking for a few months and have one under contract in Alabama.
Here's my experience, anecdotal:
- Some really good vehicles, and some really decent prices, have been offered here. I set an alert to this board after missing one of the best about two weeks ago. Go to the top of this forum and click the "Watch" button.
- It seems that if Lexus dealers get them in trade, and they are in good shape, they will offer them at a reasonable price. I suspect they feel like they can turn a decent profit over wholesaling them out without having to do too much to get rid of them. I saw an outstanding example at a Mercedes dealer, too. So listings from luxury car brands seem like possible places to jump on.
- Both of those popped up on Autolist. Pretty good web site, and app. I set alerts for my specific search and it's how I found the one in Alabama. (I pick it up next week, we'll see how that goes.)
- Many of those Autolist listings have free Carfax reports, but even if they don't you can do a Google search to locate the dealer, and they frequently offer them.
- Independent used car lots are tough. I don't think I would try them without seeing the car. Most that I have been able to track online have been in the Salt Belt (no matter where they are being sold) or have sketchy service records. I think the general narrative is these folks are grabbing cars at auction that would have sold quickly as trade-ins if they didn't have flaws. Also, the sales people are almost always completely unfamiliar with the cars, and are unable to answer the obvious questions. The exception seems to be the high-end or performance car specialty lots, but they charge a pretty serious premium.
- Craigslist can be great ... and not so great. Here's a way to search craigslist nationally: Link to Google custom search. I changed the query to: allintitle: ("LX470" | "LX 470"), 2006 OR 2007 to weed out the many, many listers who include "LX 470" in their page keywords to draft on the popularity of this search. That query grabbed anything with the variant of LX 470 and either 2006 or 2007 in the page title. (The page titles can't be larded with fake keywords.)
- Good ones get snapped up fast. Like within hours. But I've seen dozens come up in the past few months. If you are willing to more deeply investigate the ones with questions, you probably have time to do so.
- When a vehicle with reasonable mileage doesn't go fast, it has seemed to be because of rust or AHC issues.
- With the VIN, you can sign on to http//:drivers.lexus.com, create an account, enter the VIN, and review the service records - at least the ones that were done at the dealer. I checked on at least 20 this way.
- List prices for LX 470s, for the time I've been watching, almost always exceed the book values for "outstanding" examples (or however the service terms the most exceptional cars) by thousands of dollars. They even exceed the NADA values (which typically are a $1,000 or more higher than Carfax, Edmund's or Kelley). I have no idea whether the list price is close to the selling price. I just looked through a list I had of 21 cars and their advertised prices averaged 13 percent more than the average book value from NADA, Kelley, Edmunds and Carfax. That's almost $2k on a $15k vehicle.
- If you can deal with a little rust and are willing to overhaul/replace the AHC, there are some much-lower priced vehicles out there.
