Would you buy a car out of state

I have, and would. 

If you're buying from a private seller, just go buy it, get insurance, get the bill of sale plus the vehicle info, drive / have it transported back, and hit your local DMV / Secretary of State and register it. The seller is responsible for collecting sales tax and will be billed accordingly, they should be smart enough to collect it from you. If they're not, their liability.  

If it's from a dealer, same thing, except they're smart enough to collect the sales tax. They will give you all the paperwork so you can be registered, quickly, or better yet, they'll call your local DMV and get a temp registration and tag for you. That's how my last one worked. You still need to get insurance. 

Bottom line: you're liable for the sales tax in the state you buy the vehicle in, and you need a registration, temp or perm, and insurance no matter what, plus bill of sale. If you drive it home without registration (lots of folks do), most cops will let you slide with insurance / bill of sale / story of how you just bought it.  

I will just say to maybe wait until you see/drive the car to start negotiating.
My last car? Drove 2.5 hours to the dealership and a huge sign out front said "HAIL SALE" - ummm? Yup this car had hail damage they did not disclose in the 5 emails to me before I drove up there. I almost left right then, but they were offering to fix it and even after that the price was way less than the same make/model at home. 

No issue from negotiating a price from afar. Like Lisa said, though, it kinda backs you into a corner in the negotiation as you won't be able to move once you see the vehicle, or they will stand firm on the anchor you've planted. Bad outcome. 

Just go see it, and pay them what you think it's worth. 

Let me ask this: Why do you want to negotiate price from afar? Afraid it will disappear out from under you, or other?

ETA: Hey, wife: I *think* it'll cost less and you'll get some Jimmy Choo shoes out of it.

Last year I bought a car in Ft. Lauderdale, flew down there, dealer picked me up, signed the papers and drove it back to TN.

It started as an Ebay purchase.  No one met the reserve.  We emailed the internet sales manager with our quote, went back and forth a couple times and it was done.  Since he was able to avoid ebay fees, we got it less than we expected.  Sales team overnighted paperwork, we sent it back, wired money, booked the flight and I had a new car.  It was 10x easier than I ever imagined. 

My rule is I have to sit in it.  I remember falling in love with a truck once over the internet and drove to test drive it and apparently the worlds fattest man owned it before because the seat was all wore out and almost flat and it stunk of cigarette smoke.  All things that don't come through in pictures.

So, if you can go look at it, heck yeah.  If it's sight unseen I personally wouldn't do it.

Its Only Money - 2012-09-14 6:32 PM

rkreuser - 2012-09-14 6:13 PM ETA: Hey, wife: I *think* it'll cost less and you'll get some Jimmy Choo shoes out of it.

Do you know my wife? That would work perfectly. Although a trip with shopping on the magnificent mile might cost more more than the difference between the 2012 and the new 2013. This might be a bad idea after all. As to the reason for negotiating from afar, they sort of have you by the short and curlies if you've already traveled 300 miles to look at a car. I would want to walk away from the deal.

I'm not sure I know her. But I'm not sure I don't.

Anywho, when you're negotiating, that's the price you pay. And you need to be prepared to walk away from the deal. No short and curlies. Negotiating leverage comes at a due diligence price. 

That's one of the minuses of buying from afar: You have to inspect from afar, you have to invest to get there, and they know it.  It's different after you've invested a day or two and a hotel room in chicago, and they know it.

If you're not prepared to walk away, or invest in 2 or 3 trips til you get the one that's right, then you should buy locally, or new. No business risking it unless you really don't care what it looks like, you're at the mercy of the salesperson. The only thing you have working in your favor is that it's a dealer.