Hello everyone, new to lease hacking but not new to hacking and gaming systems – one of my favorite hobbies. I’m wondering if I should even try to go down the rabbithole of hacking a lease given my particular financial background is perhaps abnormal?
Basically, I have irregular income. In the past two years, many months without any income, then months in a row with income. ~700 credit score, only couple years of credit history. However, I have mid 6 figures of assets in stocks and checking accounts in total. My research shows if I have like 3x the one-pay lease amount in assets, it’s fine, but how much would that realistically help?
I intend to hack one-pay leases to try and make up for all this, but I know lenders have hardcoded checks that need to be passed first. Would suck to get a great deal and get to the end only to be denied because I “don’t have regular income” or whatever.
I don’t have the same issue as the OP but can you explain that last bit? If you are doing a one pay lease, aside from having decent credit, why would the bank care about anything - you’ve already paid all the money you’re expected to give them for the next x months?
For one thing, they want to make sure you return the car at the end of the term.
You’re leaving the dealer with an entire car, not just 35% of one.
Also, if you bring it back with an extra 100,000 miles and it’s missing two fenders and all the glass is broken out, they want to be sure you’re going to pay for the extra miles and the damages when you get the bill.
I bought a car that kicked off my credit history a couple years ago. No missed or late payments, etc. Just got Experian’s premium free trial, shows my FICO Auto 8 and 2 are high 600s and mid 700s, respectively. My hunch is that’s not good enough yet…
As for your below response, that makes sense, which I suppose irregular income would be an issue in that case…
What car brands are you aiming for? FWIW, if you are targeting luxury car brands (Audi, Mercedes, Porsche, etc) you are going to have a hard time getting approved for a lease if you’ve never leased or financed a luxury car.
Ideally some of these deals I’ve seen recently on SIGNED! for EVs with like 20+ leasehackr score.
The downside of broker deals is that they’re predetermined right? So I’m not really doing the hacking which takes the fun out of it. Why do you bring it up though? Do you suppose I might at least get approved for those?
No clue. It all depends on the car brand you are targeting. Every leasing bank has different requirements for an approval. I am neither a dealer nor a broker, so I don’t have first hand experience.
Right. I’m looking at all my credit reports and thinking I’d get tier 2 which would still be worth it, just don’t know how to get around the irregular income issue now.
I don’t really see a way other than build your credit & credit history. Lack of credit/auto history AND there isn’t a great income situation either, double whammy. If you don’t have any money coming in, how would you make next months payment? Doesn’t matter much if you actually “have money” or not, you have to be good at using someone else’s money (and be able to prove it).
We can only give our best guesses on here. You won’t know until you try.
Sure, but arguably your credit score is a better indicator than your income of your ability to pay off a future debt. I say that as someone who got laid off after a long career at a $5B company. There’s no way the finance company could know that was coming, but they would know my credit history and score. (I’d actually be curious how many car companies perform income verification for high-credit-score customers, I’m guessing it is rare)
