Hello,
I wanted to share the lease I was able to help get for my mom. This site was immensely helpful, it provided me the information needed to get what I thought was a good deal, not great by hacker standards but good enough for me. Everyone on this site is very supportive and responsive! Thanks!!
The lease was based in Virginia, which is one of those states that charges sales tax on the sales price of the vehicle. We opted to do full MSD and paid taxes, tags, fees upfront as my parents wanted the lower monthly. I don’t have a copy of the final lease agreement but this is what I remember being the final numbers.
2017 Mercedes E300 4 Matic P1 Loaner
5100 miles
Term: 3yr/10k miles
MSRP: $60,175
Sales Price: $46,900 (22% off MSRP)
Money Factor before MSD: 0.001
MSD: $4,500
Money Factor after MSD: .0003
Upfront (paid taxes, tag, fee): ~$4,200 (sales tax 4.15%, document fee: $595, acquisition: $1,095)
Prepaid Maintenance Plan - 3yr: ~$600 (was around $17/month)
Total upfront: $8,700 (MSDs and taxes, tag, fees)
Monthly: $375 (includes the prepaid maintenance, it would’ve been $358 w/o the maintenance)
(I paid the taxes and fees because my parents are giving me their old Lexus, seemed like a good deal to me.)
A few things I experienced, learned along the way:
- My parents were interested in a Lexus, Acura, Mercedes when we started the process. They’ve had Acura and Lexus vehicles in the past and was interested in the Mercedes. I searched mainly in the DC metro area and went as far north as Baltimore and as far east as Annapolis and west as Charlottesville and as far south as Richmond. I found that there are more Mercedes dealers than there are Acura or Lexus dealers combined. In the DC metro area alone there 7 Mercedes dealers. If you include Baltimore, Annapolis, and Richmond there are 14. Compared to 4 Lexus dealers and 3 Acura dealers. Not sure why but I was very surprised by this.
- Even after negotiating (at a local dealer) on a vehicle down to $47k on a similarly equipped MB E300 Loaner and indicating I kind of knew what I was talking about the finance office offered me a MF of .0023! We promptly stood up and walked out. The sales manager stopped me, told us he could drop it to the ‘employee rate’ of 0.0011. My parents had already left the building and wouldn’t go back in. (#grateful for this site and Edmunds lease forum!)
- I had a hard time getting anyone to take the United MileagePlus Premier incentive. I was able to get a few dealerships to give me $500 off the loaner. I had one dealership say that incentive was not allowed on a loaner even though the incentive was ‘accepted’ by a different dealer that was owned by the same parent company.
- Negotiating by email is really the only way to go. Most Mercedes dealerships seemed accommodating of this. Two of the four Lexus dealers would only ‘beat any number’ I gave them but not provide any until I came into the office.
- It seems like even though I’m learning about the leasing process and the different things to negotiate on and different hacks to get the monthly down, it seemed like the salesperson was also. This would make the email thread very very long. Had to walk through one point at a time before moving on to the next thing.
- After negotiating the sale price and settling on the MF. I wanted to see 3 payment options one with MSDs and another with all taxes and fees paid upfront, and the third option with MSDs and taxes and fees paid upfront. The order matters and confused the conversation. I should’ve asked for the monthly with taxes and fees upfront first then the monthly with MSDs. The reason is that the MSD is based on the monthly payment so if you calculate the MSD with zero down the monthly is much higher which means the MSD is higher. The difference was between putting $5,500 in MSDs vs $4500 in MSDs with the same effect on MF. (…or least that’s how I understood it.).
Anyways, sorry for the long post, I really learned a lot from this site and it really opened my eyes.
Good luck to everyone next week, final week of the month, quarter, year!
Irv