I’m currently shopping around some dealerships to see what lease offers I can get, and one of the responses I received was, and I quote, “there is nothing we can do about the money factor unfortunately. Even with phenomenal credit”
Is this salesperson lying or just outright uninformed? Or are they using some technical wording and twisting the truth by saying the money factor cannot be changed from the buy rate, but the rate they use to calculate the payments is something like the “interest rate” or something? I was just so confused when I received that response that I wanted to check if I was understanding correctly.
There stores and chains that are well-known for marking up their MF and do not budge from it. That’s why the consensus on LH is to evaluate your overall deal and not to get hung up on individual factors
The dealer cannot decrease the money factor below the fund provider’s money factor buy rate*. Stating “lower than what the bank is offering” is nebulous. The bank offers several money factors that include various tiers associated with different levels of reserves.
*There are special cases where the MF could be less than the buy rate… (a) in the case of multiple MSD’s and (2) one-pay MF discounts.
Most people come here uneducated and say this payment ‘looks bad or high’ without having any idea of what the payment should look like based on a target discount off MSRP while using base MF and RV for the term they want. And also getting the DAS they want to pay.
So, go to Wiki here and learn how to use the LH calc to put together an educated target payment/DAS you can ask dealers to match. Let them know you will buy right away if they meet that target.
With some manufacturers you can lower the m.f. with msd’s, but I realize that’s not what OP asked, just additional info for the OP. If you Google “Edmunds lease forum 2024 Honda Accord”, or whatever car you’re looking at, and scroll to the current month, you can see the mf and incentives, or ask the Edmunds moderators for your specific zip code and for the model/ trim you’re interested in, and they will tell you.
Yup, thanks for the Edmunds callout. I had already asked on Edmunds for the available rebates, MF, and RVs then calculated a target selling price using the LH calculator before taking rebates into account. I asked my friend who last month (different rates i know) leased the same make/model/trim in the IL Chicagoland area that I was going for. This informed how I landed on my target payment. But I guess I might have slightly missed the mark on 1. checking my target with this community if it was a reasonable price and 2. asking dealers for their best deal rather than asking them if they could provide me with a lease offer that was near my price target.
Construct a well-researched target deal then make the dealer an unambiguous, immediately actionable offer on a specific vehicle. Under no circumstances should you ask them how much they want you to pay.
