Let’s assume no cap cost reduction or down payment…
A close end lease monthly payment consists of depreciation, a rent charge, and sales taxes. This means no part of your hypothetical $800 monthly goes toward the principal of the underlying collateral once the lease matures. In fact, if you try to structure a lease so depreciation goes negative, it won’t fund.
A loan monthly payment consists of principal and interest. The principal includes the entire amount borrowed to pay for the car, taxes, and other inception costs. There is an inflection point where the marginal principal payment is more valuable than than the marginal depreciation; at which point the payer would start to “build equity”. Assuming the entire loan were paid to maturity, the person would then own all claim on the depreciated asset.
In the first 0 to ~30 months of a 60 month ICE vehicle financing payment (EVs suck and I hate how they skew things)… the amortization schedule of the loan means the monthly payments more favor interest than principal. And the principal has not yet offset the depreciation of the vehicle since most (I said most!!!) new vehicles depreciate the most over the first 30 months.
So, if someone finances the vehicle and sells at 30 months, they likely get absolutely hosed since they’d be underwater and had made large monthly payments.
Continuing to make financing payments through the end of the 60 month term means that the person owns a 5 year old vehicle and has built equity.
Some people think equity in a vehicle is a great thing (the total cost of ownership crew on LH loves to mock people who cycle BMW ICE leases).
Some people think building equity in a depreciating asset is a bad thing.
Dollars to donuts, if you found a car with discounts that were agnostic to the financing structures… and chose to finance it with the same cost of funds as the implied APR of a lease money factor… the lease would be less per month than the financing option. If you were smart about it, you would just save the monthly difference between the lease and financing payments. This savings per month becomes the equivalent of the equity that would have been built up in the vehicle over the payment horizons.