Hey all, I would like some help with out next lease. My wife currently has a 2015 Nissan Pathfinder 4WD SL. Her lease is up in August and, as expected, her Nissan salesman is already emailing and calling her about it. I know with lease-end just 4 months away its not a huge deal to turn it in early, especially if we plan on leasing another Nissan, so I’m looking now. My wife has actually really loved her Pathfinder. It’s been great. No issues, and has worked out well for us having a 4-year-old and two dogs. Our lease was, I thought at the time, a decent deal. We got 36/12k with I believe $1,000 total OOP for $399/month. My wife is very adamant that if we lease something new it HAS to be $400/month or less. Looking now at the 2018 Pathfinders, I’m finding, in my opinion, way worse deals than when we got our 2015. So I’ve started trying to think if maybe there are any other good options? Needs to be comparable, i.e Leather, 3 rows, decently-equipped, pano sunroof would be a huge bonus. I see people mentioning the QX60s a lot, but can you seriously get a 4WD one for $400/month? Any help would be appreciated!!
Yes. There are at least 3 threads on it. If you don’t go all out on options, you can get it for substantially less than $400, especially if you get vpp.
I thought built on a car platform was the requirement (e.g. NOT body on frame), so you could build a 6 row one if you wanted and it could be a crossover. [There certainly were times I wanted a 4 row vehicle with my 3 kids]
Yes I get VPP through my employer. I used it when we got the Pathfinder back in 2015.
Side question, since Infiniti is technically Nissan, would that make a difference if trading in the lease early? I mean in the sense of how if you trade early with the same manufacturer they were generally waive fees and such.
It seems like lease deals are really not good at all this month. Like the Pathfinder has no lease cash at all, no good incentives, and I find the same with most every other option.
Is April typically a bad month? Does May get any better normally or would it be even worse?
Here’s my issue with the QX60. Everything she has on her Pathfinder currently you’d have to get additional packages to get on the QX60. Then suddenly the affordable lease isn’t so affordable anymore. Her Pathfinder SL has heated rear seats, for example, that you have to basically have the top of the line QX60 to get. Not to mention the collision mitigation and all that. Standard on all Pathfinders, thousands extra on a QX60. Yeah a base QX60 lease would be great…except it has none of those things.
I love the QX60 and would love for my wife to have something that nice. But I HIGHLY doubt we could have a $399 lease payment on one and not have it missing things her current car has.
The $53k MSRP QX60 is in your range assuming you have VPP and can do MSD. That includes DAP (Driver Assist Pack) which has some collision mitigation technologies.
It won’t have heated rear seats and the rest of the tech in the Delux Tech package (58k and up) but choose what’s important to you. I thought heated seats would be nice to have too but not worth the premium.
We can’t do a lot of MSDs. When we got the Pathfinder, I believe we put $1,000 down. That’s really all I’d like to keep it at. Maybe $1,500, but no more. I understand MSDs are refundable at lease end, but it still means shelling out that money in the first place.
The QX60 you are looking at has everything but the theatre package, MSPR will be at $58K. No I don’t think you will get $399 deal now, at least I haven’t seen it. But do you really need that deluxed tech package for $7300 that a $1800 driver assist package wont do? If you do the package swap, MSRP will be at $53K, payment will be below $400
Personally no I don’t think we would need all that excess, and honestly my wife would probably agree. I guess I just wasn’t wanting her new car to have less on it than her old. But in reality, the heated rear seats were hardly ever used, we’ve obviously done fine without collision avoidance for 3 years (my car doesn’t have any of that either). My personal preference would be an AWD QX60 with just the premium package. Even base without any packages would work, but I do like the extras on the premium.
Let’s look at MSD in a different way. In my QX60 lease, if I don’t do MSD, my payment will be around $430. After $2700 MSD, my payment become $369. It is $60/month => $720/year. Where else can you generate guarantee annual return of $720 with $2700 investment.
The key here is to NOT do any down payment, and do a much MSD as you can to reduce the interest in a lease.
Wife has made it clear she hates the CX-9 styling.
I have a Hyundai Elantra Sport myself, so I’ve naturally looked into the Sante Fe, which seems to have a ton of incentives (although I don’t know how they lease) but she has seemed less than thrilled with that idea.
QX60, premium, premium plus, driver assist, MSRP $53K. You can sure get below $400 with zero down with MSD and VPP. I am sure brokers here will be able to get you something like that if you don’t want to do the leg work
Okay that leads me to my next question. We’ve done multiple leases now, but I still feel like a novice and way too-easily pushed-over with them. I get VPP through my work, which I used, or thought I did, when we got her Pathfinder. Sticker was $40k, we got it for $36k, which looking back now seems like not so great of a deal. How exactly do I work the VPP into everything, and ensure I get the absolute lowest price?
