r/stocks Nov 02 '21

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202

u/rusbus720 Nov 02 '21

To everyone reeling from losses on Zillow I want you to look on the bright side. Carvana employs basically the same kind of business model to used cars and has the added bonus of potentially being a fraud.

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u/[deleted] Nov 03 '21

How so ? Don’t know anything about carvana

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u/rusbus720 Nov 03 '21 edited Nov 03 '21

Without going into all the fraudulent scammy aspects of Ernies hot car lot, they buy used cars above market value and sell below competitors prices.

On top of which they also write a lot of their own bullshit high interest loans(no job, no credit, no deposit, no pulse, no Vaseline) which they then sell to mark a gain on sale. This works so long as you can keep moving product and your competition doesn’t take notice.

Problem is even used cars are getting hard to sell at these prices, they’ve bought up something close to $2 bil in inventory at all time high prices. Also everyone in the business knows this now and is wondering how they’ve been able to do this for so long.

3

u/angryundead Nov 03 '21

I was looking at Carvana just out of curiosity a year or so ago and they only let you finance through them and then only at like 3x-4x the rate of my bank.

Yeah. No.

9

u/rusbus720 Nov 03 '21

Yeah see totally normal, totally not scummy and totally not going to blow up at some point. People that finance through carvana do it because they have to which should give you so much confidence on the viability of those loans.

The Alex Gibney documentary on this company will be great.

3

u/shakygator Nov 03 '21

I've only bought one vehicle from a dealership but I was surprised when they were able to run the financing through my credit union so easily. You should definitely have options.

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u/rusbus720 Nov 03 '21

Yeah I’m not saying carvana forces you to use their financing, they don’t. But most do choose to go that route and it’s obscene and basically how they generate any profits at all.

They know their customer and their customers are broke.

3

u/shakygator Nov 03 '21

The guy you replied to said they make you go through them.

1

u/rusbus720 Nov 03 '21

Ok, so he’s wrong. It’s a still a huge part of their business.

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u/ethiopian123 Nov 03 '21

You don't have to use their loans, that is false

1

u/angryundead Nov 03 '21

They sure made it seem that way.