Okay…ya, I thought it was solid, myself, but like I said I’m new to leasing and didn’t want to get hit over the head because I didn’t ask questions. I looked at another Trail Boss in my area. It was $2k cheaper and same money ($510/mo) It’s cherry red and almost all the same options, but now with this deal it seems that one is not as good
are you a broker?
I can travel to MI for the right one
We have a very detailed leasing101 section on the main page that goes into detail about lease contracts, how to calculate leases, how to determine if a deal is decent or not, etc as well as an extensive, step by step breakdown of the leasehackr calculator, with each line item broken out, to help with understanding how leases work. This is all here so that you can have the tools readily available to you for determining what a good deal is.
There are a lot of people that seem to be under the impression that we have a magical black book of monthly payments that states what is or isn’t a good deal on a vehicle, with no attention to be paid towards personal situations, regions, tax structures, incentive qualifications, local markets, etc. The simple reality is that unless you’re intimately familiar with a specific vehicle and those details (like @ethanrs above, who is a dealer for that vehicle), a monthly payment is usually a worthless value for evaluating a lease deal. It’s the output of the lease equations; the inputs are what help inform the quality of the deal. Hunting down those inputs take a little bit of work; there are details of your personal situation needed, etc. So step one in looking into the quality of a lease is going and gathering that data. We tell people to start there because that’s what’s needed to evaluate the data, it requires information we don’t have access to, and ultimately, if someone needs to go gather information for your deal, it better be you. You’d be amazed how many people want random internet strangers to do vastly more work on their deal than they’re willing to do themselves.
From there, it’s about establishing solid targets. That means researching comparable deals to sort out what is a reasonable expectation, given the current market conditions, for a vehicle. Again, this takes some time. There isn’t a spreadsheet laying around with the mean discount and standard deviation for every vehicle just hanging out. It takes some research.
Ultimately, however, it comes down to this: consistently getting good lease deals is a byproduct of being knowledgeable in your numbers to have appropriate targets, being confident in those values to stick to them, and entering into negotiations from the strongest position possible. People can tell you the targets, but without the confidence of understanding where they’re coming from, you’re lost on the last two.
Now people LOVE to go running into a dealer, spend hours negotiating, and then come here and say “here is the offer, is this a good deal?” Doing so tells me a couple important things:
- They have spent no time actually working out what a vehicle should cost
- They’re “negotiation strategy” consists of asking the dealer what the dealer wants them to pay and trying to take some money off
- They have no confidence in their numbers, because they don’t have any
- They’ve communicated to the dealer that they have no idea what their actual negotiation targets are and are thus starting off in a weak position
- They’re doing all their negotiations in an environment designed to put them at a disadvantage
- Their value to the dealer is no longer a “quick, easy, no hassle sale to boost numbers” and is now focused on gross profit
As a successful businessman, you should be well aware that effective negotiation requires knowing what you’re trying to negotiate to, positioning yourself in as strong of a position as possible, and generating a value proposition to the dealer that makes sense. Why take steps that would diminish this?
Now, your deal here may be great. Or it may not. We would need to dive into the details to evaluate it for me to be able to answer that question. But either way, if you want to be consistently successful in getting good deals, take the opportunity here to learn and adjust your strategies.
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No, and usually MI GM dealers won’t touch out of state leases. It was just an example as to why feedback from folks out of your region may not be 100% indicative of your own local market.
The best place to start is
Please read links in there such as “how to calculate payments” and other helpful articles.
It might seem like a lot but TBH there are fewer <60 minute exercises which will save you so much time, money and anxiety over your driving lifetime.
It may also save you (after your negotiations with LH input) inside the finance office where no one can from the internet can really help you.
Remember, it’s almost impossible to reverse-engineer the math starting from the output (monthly payment) and figure out if it’s a good deal. Start at the beginning.
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Best to look at all the details.