'You Need To Hang Out at Carmax:' Expert Reveals the One Thing You Need To Look For In a Car Dealership

"You need to look up the wealthiest people in your state."

Photo by: mollybaxter_cars & Giorgio Trovato

By: Nina Hernandez

Oct 28, 2025 at 2:00pm ET

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A car expert is urging consumers to consider buying cars from the wealthiest dealership owners in their states. There’s logic behind her advice.

TikTok creator Molly Baxter (@mollybaxter_cars) issued a PSA in a video posted late last week. It currently has nearly 40K views.

“If you’re considering buying a car in 2025 or 2026, you need to look up the wealthiest people in your state, see which one of those wealthy people owns car dealerships, and those are the dealerships that you are going to want to shop at,” she says.

Should You Buy From the Wealthiest Dealership Owners In Your State?

Baxter acknowledges that this advice might not appeal to everyone. “It’s incredibly controversial, because we don’t normally want to buy things from the uber wealthy,” she says. “We want to buy from small business owners. But when it comes to the car business—we have a crunch coming right now that is going to leave a lot of people bankrupt.”

She says in the next couple of years, it will be smarter to buy from larger dealerships instead of mom and pop operations.

“When people get in that scarcity mode, they start doing desperate things,” she says. “And it’s really sad to say, but you need to buy from people who are owning their store for their whole portfolio—not just for their sales revenue.”

How Do People Feel About Her Advice?

Viewers in the comments weighed in on the merits of Baxter’s advice and offered their own tips for buying in the current market.

“Nah, you need to hang out at Carmax and buy someone’s trade-in,” wrote one person.

“Or shop online with dealers in markets in states that are struggling,” suggested a second person. “A local dealer quoted me $48K out the door on a new car. I bought it out of state and had it delivered at $41K. Lots of deals to be had.”

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“Just don’t buy anything and let them crash,” said a third person. “Every brand of car sold in America is too much for too little. The math isn’t math-ing and we are being taken all the way around.”

Someone else said, “Buying a new car is the worst financial decision you can make. Buy a 10-year-old used car that has cheap aftermarket parts.”

Another joked, “This is propaganda from the uber wealthy.”

Is the Car Market on the Verge of a Crash?

The U.S. car market is showing signs of turbulence, as Baxter alludes. The number of repossessions and amount of monthly payments are both going up. That could mean that lower income Americans are facing other financial challenges. And the market hasn’t yet felt the full impact of Trump’s tariff policies, which will soon increase sticker prices even further.

That makes some consumers, like a Reddit user who posted to r/carbuying seven months ago, wonder if a market crash will eventually lead to a price correction.

Several people explained why this is unlikely to happen.

“Tariffs are going to reduce the amount of new cars coming in,” one wrote. “Dealerships will be snatching up used cars, which will inflate the market on used cars, while they wait for new car inventory to trickle in. New car prices will not be dipping anytime soon and used cars are going to spike.”

Motor1 contacted Baxter via email for comment. We’ll be sure to update this if she responds.