A friend introduced me to this forum and I love what you all do here. Hopefully you guys might be able to help me out.
I’m from northern New Jersey. I’m returning a base model 2015 Honda CRV lease on Monday. We were paying $280 a month with zero down. I was looking to lease a midsize sedan (accord or similar) with apple carplay (Accord Sport maybe?) for around $250 with zero down or no more than first month’s payment. The dealer I worked with the first time for the CRV told me to come on Monday to get an Accord sport because on the last day of the month I’ll get the best deal. But he didn’t go into specifics.
Any suggestions? I’m open to other makes and models.
Also if you could walk me through what I should do to get the best deal possible, I would really appreciate that. I’m a total beginner and don’t have any money to put into that whole money factor thing.
Details of what I’m looking for in my next lease:
36 month lease, 10-12k miles per year, family currently leases Honda and I’m a previous customer, and I don’t have money to take advantage of MSDs, looking for a $250-$300 monthly payment, zero down
I went to Subaru and Honda. Honda said they want $420 a month on an accord sport. And subaru wanted $310 for a Subaru legacy premium (no eyesight). Both offered to pay my last lease payment on the CRV. Both Zero down, 39 months, 10k miles per year.
Dollars to donuts both offered to roll your last payment into a new lease. Official pull ahead program versus rolling lease payment forward is a big difference.
A manufacturer pull ahead program is a rebate provided the dealer from the manufacturer, just like any other rebate. See link below for an example. Otherwise it is just the dealership rolling your last payment into your new loan/reducing the discount on the car. Normally if it’s an official pull ahead program you can find evidence of it online through Google or the captive finance company.
Call Honda Financial to find out if you are eligible. You should be, usually these programs become active between 3 to 6 months away from lease end. You may have received an email or something in the mail from Honda as well. You may want to see what conquest rebates are available this month if you aren’t married to another Honda. You may get better value from another brand offering conquest, but you might also want to see what the Accord programs look like this month since they are having trouble moving them. Paying that much for an Accord is crazy though, especially in this climate. See if the wife will go test drive some other stuff. A pretty decently equipped Malibu would probably cost about half that with conquest if you are looking for a midsized sedan.
Unless you are expecting a pay bump in the next three years, I would urge you to consider buying and holding long term. Honda, Toyota, etc. even Hyundai and Kia are generally reliable and can get factory extended warranties for relatively cheap. Plus the cars formerly considered compacts (such as Corolla, Civic, etc) are grown up to midsize now.
Leasing is not for everyone… it is a perpetual hamster wheel and the costs add up to a lot over your lifetime. Every two or three years you are paying (using some average numbers):
DMV $400
Doc $450
Acq $750
Tax $1,000+
Disposition $450
Higher APR than financing
Higher insurance costs
Any broker fee (you mentioned elsewhere)
Any mileage charges
Any excess wear/tear
Poss. buying new tires you get no/little use from
Think about all those fees paid out 15-20 times over the next 45-50 years. Instead of, say, 7 times by buying.
He’s in a catch-22. To get one of these in the 250-300 range to buy (if he doesn’t have the $$$ for MSD, he’s not going to have it for down payment), he’d be looking at a several year old car, that would have minimal (if any) warranty, without taking out an 84 month term.
Another example of how leasing costs you: You have a low mileage example of an in-demand car that holds its value well. IDK what your residual is, but you probably have (theoretical) equity in the car.
The problem is, how do you get any equity out? To sell it private party, you’d have to pay off the car and get the title. So that’s out. You can take it to Carmax but there’s none within 2 hours of you, and there’s no guarantee they’ll give you much better than wholesale. You can go essentially door to door from Honda dealer to Honda dealer, but who has the time for that? And if you don’t know how to calculate a lease, how do you know they’re not just moving numbers around… pretending to give you a better trade value while making it up somewhere else?
OTOH if you owned the car you could hold on to it longer or sell it privately if you needed to. It would sell like a hot cake.
FY: If you look on the brand-specific forums, you can usually find a dealer or two who offer the best pricing on extended warranties. Kia is bumper-to-bumper only for 5yr/60K and the rest is powertrain. You can get a “wrap” extended warranty that broadens the powertrain warranty to close to B2B.
This is a great post. The keeping up with the Jones’ can be a big problem. Lease hacking isn’t cheaper than buying and keeping an accord or Camary for ten years. It is a way to drive a new car every 2-3 years for the price of buying one luxury car every 7-10 years. But I’ll stop before I get into r/personalfinance territory.
My only disagreement with you is on extended warranties. My family has a history of buying and keeping Hondas/Toyotas for a decade+ and never once would an extened warranty have paid off. I view extendes warranties as insurance appropriate for for people who don’t have the savings to repair a car. But you pay dearly for that piece of mind. For a used car they might be worth it so you can work out any unforseen problems that arise in the first year that mechanic missed on inspection. Now for BMW, that’s a different story.
