i am in Texas. Was offered to buy Taos S out the door between $24,000- $25,000 from various dealers.
still thought it was too much.
Step back and set your target deal before anything else.
We always recommend the following method before you ever contact a dealership. If you do all of the work up front, youâll have a stress free dealer experience and set yourself for success.
- Read Leasing 101 (EDITORIAL | LEASEHACKR) to understand how to calculate a lease payment and the variables. Monthly payment is an output, not an input!!
- Pick a specific vehicle that you want to target
- Gather the current MF, RV and incentives from Edmunds forums for your zip code
- Research the LH marketplace and other deals that have been made recently on your vehicle - what was their pre-incentive discount? How did their lease terms differ?
- Plug your numbers into the LH calculator (CALCULATOR | LEASEHACKR), and use a pre-incentive discount similar to what you have seen
- Create a target deal, this is what youâre trying to negotiate to. You can try different terms, selling price discount, etc. and see how your monthly payment is affected. It is also possible that different trims of your vehicle may have different MF and RV (i.e. this is very common with GM), so make sure that you look into that. Come up with a set of inputs that give you the output that you want - your desired monthly payment.
With a target price determined, you now have a deal to pursue and compare dealer offers against. More importantly, you have a solid foundation to work from.
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I had previously run the calculator and adjusted the MF to make it align with my deal. We have excellent credit so I guess that SHOULD BE 0.00060
Here is my revised attempt to use the LH Calculator based on the info I have and suggestions you have given. There are 2 problems:
A. With this deal I am supposedly getting tax credits so no sales tax and as a result of that tax being 6.25% the monthly payment is 461 but the deal I was offered is 397. I was not certain how to adjust for that tax credit. I am assuming that I put that in the untaxed incentives and I input 1745. (6.25% x the SP of 27929)?
B.the Residual value based on 56% is now providing a lower RV than the number provided by the dealer, which is perplexing. I wonder if I did something wrong�
Note all of these numbers are simply based on the worksheet I posted above
You put a tax.credit in by adjusting the sales tax rate accordingly. Goes down from 6.25% to something like 1.5%.
I think youâre missing the point though regarding the target deal. The dealerâs numbers are irrelevant to your target deal. It is a completely independent figure.
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Thank you for your reply and rest assured that I do hear and understand the notion of the Target deal. I wholeheartedly understand that and am working towards that thanks in large part to the input from this forum.
The primary issue that I am struggling with is using the calculator to properly calculate my target deal. The terminology and taxonomy of terms necessary for the calculator vs the terminology used by dealers is what I struggle with most â particularly the treatment of the tax credits. These are now becoming more clear as well but that was where I got stuck prior to the guidance from this forum.
PS I am happy to pay a broker if you know of a good one in Texas. I just havent been able to find one.
Thanks @goofy â This is for an Taos SE vs Taos S but if you have any suggestions I would welcome them.
yes that is why is put Taos S. Really did not see how the SE was so much more when i went to look. the S is bare bones, but is the SE worth several thousand more? IDK
My suggestion, Buy a Toyota. (this is coming from a person whos wife loves VWâs ) especially if you are reselling soon.
Hint: Most cars do not lease well. They do not have the programs (RV, MF and incentives) to be good candidates for lease-hacking, regardless of what dealer discount you can negotiate. This is truer now than it has ever been. Which means you cannot start your search with a particular car or cars in mind, and then find a way to make them lease well.
It will be like pushing a boulder uphill while pulling teeth, and youâll still probably have a bad deal in the end. You need to start your search by filtering only the vehicles that are leasing well right now and offer good value per dollar.
Check out the âShare a Dealâ and âMarketplaceâ sections of LH forums to decide whatâs leasing well and pick a vehicle that is already proven to offer good value.
Remember, there are no magic wands that can save a deal from poor programs (RV, MF, and incentives) and/or poor discounts.
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Wants vs Needs.
your going to pay for what you want vs getting the best deal on what you need.
but a happy wife is worth MILLIONS ! it is you choice.
I wouldnât do this deal. It is too expensive IMHO. Go back and do more research as noted above by mllcb42. I leased two SE Taoses a couple months back. I posted my deal on Share a Deal. Canât say if that kind of deal is repeatable but âŚit will give you something to work with idea wise. Go check it out. If you canât get a good deal on a lease buy if you can afford it. Always run the numbers with qualified info from research. I also lucked out with a great dealer. Best of luck to you.
what the hell is a Taos?
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Baby Audi that was harvested before it could blossom into fully grown Q3
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Yaakova - this is an interesting point on preferences so in the spirit of spawning discussion, I am not sure I agree with you. We got the same car Taos SE with sunroof my MSRP .
I am not sure what is better but I am interested to hear the forumâs opinions so that I can learn (as I always do from LH). We opted for the lower DAS.
You paid = 14774 = $2606 DAS + 12168 over time =14774 for 10k miles a year.
Your MSRP: $30,174; Selling Price: $28,665
Your monthly is 312
I paid = 15132 = $388 DAS (first month) + 14744 = 15132 for 12k miles a year
My MSRP 31669; Selling price $28785
My Monthly is 388
I guess my deal may be harder to put on swap a lease but only 388 DAS. That worked for us. Your monthly is much lower and your total cost is lower so that is great for you. Thanks for your comment and congrats on your car. I hope you have been enjoying it.
PS Interesting note, before we signed my deal I noticed they tried to change lease to $404 pm and when I asked him why he said the $388 didnt include maintenance âŚdespite the fact that the sticker said maintenance included at 10/20/30k miles. I showed him the sticker and gave him a look and he played dumbâŚoopsâŚI couldnt believe how shameless they were in trying to pull a fast oneâŚI called them out and the immediately changed the monthly back to $388. Thats where we signed
Shaun,
Just to clarify my DOS included no cap cost reduction. I wonât do cap cost on a lease.
My DOS did not come out of pocket as I sold my previous leased Kia Forte EX to him as a third party sale. The DOS came from the âprofit.â It was all tax, DMV fees, aquisition fee & 1st month (I may be forgetting something, I donât remember).
Maybe this helps in evaluation of the deal.
Congrats on your new Taos! Enjoy it. We are enjoying ours.
If you two really want to compare deals, just look at the pre-incentive discount adjusted for buy rate and ignore everything else.
I for one am not interested in comparing deals.
The gentleman wanted others to comment.
I was just pointing out an important fact & explaining one aspect so that others had information they may need.
FYI, my buy rate was not marked up at all. I got the Base MF & residual from Edmunds & that is the MF & residual I got from the dealer.
Because the pre-incentive discount, adjusted for buy rate (well, and adjusted for any bs add ons, but letâs assume everyone is paying enough attention to just say no to those), is the only knob that you have control over negotiating. That is the value that youâre trying to maximize in your deal.
Incentives, tax structures, fees, etc are dependent on your personal situation, where you live, what you qualify for, etc and are not comparable values.
You could, for example, have two people leasing the same car. One lives in a market with extra incentives, minimal taxes, and they have loyalty. The other lives in a market with high taxes and no targeted incentives. The first could pay full MSRP and the latter get a big discount, and the first could have a lower payment. They still got a substantially worse deal than the latter, even though the payment is less, because of mitigating factors that arenât comparable.
By evaluating just the pre-incentive discount appropriately adjusted, youâre normalizing the data and comparing the one variable that is actually worth looking at.
Got it! Thank you!
You are one fast dude on the keyboard!! I appreciate your knowledge and insights.
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