Some examples of Big-Ticket items are real estate, big utilities (E.g. Furniture, Washing Machines and Televisions etc.), cars, and other items. These items are usually also durable and provide utility to their buyers for an extended period of time.

• If shopping for a car, visit dealerships in the last few days of the month. Salespeople have monthly targets and incentives to chase, and they’ll work harder to get your deal if month-end is looming (meaning you can squeeze them harder on price).
• Get finance pre-approval. Especially for cars and property, having finance approval in the bag already means that you’re a more attractive option to the seller, which means they could be more flexible on what price they ultimately accept.
• Find someone who also needs one of what you’re looking for – you can often negotiate pricing when buying more than one of something, and split the savings.
• With vehicles, target demo models or 1-2 year old models. As a rule of thumb, cars depreciate by 15-20% the minute they drive off the showroom floor for the first time. With many people having bought cars they can’t afford in recent years, there are many cars back on the market that have only been driven for a year or two. Often, you’ll also get the balance of maintenance plans or warranties included, so you have less to worry about in terms of service costs and issues.
• If buying a house, be sure to get mortgage quotes from as many banks as possible. And you don’t have to accept their first offer of an interest rate either. Substantiate your argument for a better rate (history with the bank, excellent employment history, quote from a competitor), and they could well improve their offer a little.
• Buy big-ticket items around financial year-end (generally, the end of February). Retailers want to turn stock into cash before they close off their books for the year (it makes their balance sheets look better).
• Buy one model back when a new version of a gadget or appliance is released. The minute that a newer, shinier model of something comes out, the previous model depreciates in value (even though it likely has 95% of the same features).
• Research distributors/wholesalers of the product you’re looking for. While many do not sell straight to the public, some do have certain allocation of goods that they can sell direct. This way, you skip paying for the extra profit margins of the retailers they would sell through.
• Get quotes from competitive branches of businesses that sell the same goods. Having a quote on paper from a competitor (even within the same group of companies) strengthens your bargaining position exponentially.
• Remember, almost everything is negotiable. Even for the biggest-ticket item that most people will ever purchase – a property – estate agents can be negotiable on their commission percentages. If you’re saving them work (say, you’re already pre-qualified, and can put in a firm offer without them having to market for weeks and months on end), negotiate that they reduce their commission percentage slightly, to split this saving with the seller.