PSA On Leasing a car

I am always stressed out every 36 months when my car is up.

Seems like there are too many smoke and mirror number that I can never figure out what my number should be and I have to trust the most untrustworthy industry I know.

Well that all changed now and the power can be yours.

Find the make an model you are interested in and build it on the manufacturer website. This will give you the real MSRP. Go to Edmunds and join the forum for that model. Ask the Mod for the Money factor (fancy word for Monthly interest rate), Residual value and lease cash or incentives or loyalty for your make, model and lease term. Also tell them where in the country your buying as many deals are regional.

Next visit a dealer drive the car, learn what you can and get the agreed value or purchase price.

Take that info to the leasehacker.com site.

Here you can do 2 things:

1. post the car you want and brokers will send you deals. They give you a baseline of what is available and you can take a deal or take the offer and shop it locally for a better deal.

2. put all the numbers int their lease calculator and it will give you the mathematical lease payment including your local sales tax.

Using the tools above I saved over $ 1,100 dollars off the 36 Months or 30+ bucks a month, that was off my best negotiated deal since I found this late in the game.

Once you can show the dealer you know how to figure the deal they get in line quickly. Using these tools I replaced my Q70 Sport Infiniti with a BMW 540 IX M Sport for just a little less money per month !

Not so stresses about leasing anymore :)

Good Luck and happy Hunting !

I have also used and had good results, with Lease Hacker.

Thank you! Excellent advice

Congratulations on the new car, J !

Hopefully you were able to negotiate down the MSRP on the vehicle as well. Also, some places will adjust money factor based on credit rating and have them in a tiered structure.

I hadn`t heard about this tool the one time I leased about 7 years ago, but the information might have come in handy. Something I found interesting while working with the dealer was watching the money factor and residuals change with the lease term length. Some manufactures will incentivise a certian term length. For me it was 42 months. At the time, VW had a much lower money factor for 42 months, while the residuals were pretty proportional. I saved a ton of money by simply keeping the car for an extra six months.

Ah, leased vehicles. It would seem that with the average price of a new vehicle , including SUVs and trucks that outsell quantity-wise cars, being north of $32,000, leasing is the ONLY way many new car `buyers" can afford such a vehicle. These lease returns are today`s used car market or more correctly, Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) vehicles. Remember when new car buyers traded for a new model vehicle every three years?? Doesn`t happen very often anymore.
Lease returns are great for those of us who want a "newer" vehicle without a lot of miles on them, BUT they do carry a price premium. We found this out when shopping for a used car. Cars and SUVs we considered in our target (budget) price range and year had 75,000 to 100,000 miles on them, even when they are 3 or 4 years old. We found find a CPO 2015 Taurus AWD-SEL that was slightly over our budget, but with very low miles. Previous owner traded it in on a truck. This was after looking at and trying out 16 other vehicles. It has been a good choice, even though the gas mileage is not the best (14-18 MPG in the city in the winter, 23-27 on trips in the summer). We like the AWD for driving and contending with snowy Wisconsin winters.

I`ve taken advantage of lease returns myself.

I leased my previous car and then bought out the lease when I was done. By some stroke of luck the residual value of the car was LESS than the price of the same car on the used market. I wanted a used car I could trust, and since I lived the car already, it was a no brainer. I could not get a better deal on a comperable used car.

My current vehicle was a lease return. I bought it from them same dealership who sold it the first time and even met the original salesman. It was also serviced at that dealership, so I was able to see the complete service history as well. Like you discribe the car had low mileage, in very good condition, and was a great deal price-wise. I lucked out and the car still had a year of factory warranty and I got another year of CPO warranty thrown in on top of that!