Looking at a couple of different cars to lease for 3 yrs/36K miles. One of them is the RWD M340i in lightly optioned form with MSRP of about $57-58K. I don’t want all the DAP, PAP, etc, packages. The only must-have option is the 792M double spoke cerium grey 19” wheels, but I realize most in-stock cars come with at least a few small options like remote engine start, heated front seats, etc. In any case, the type of M340i I am looking for does exist on SoCal dealer lots.
So on to my questions. When people mention 10% off MSRP type of discounts, is that after all incentives are applied or before incentives? Let’s take a $58K MSRP car. There is $1,500 in lease cash on the car right now and I qualify for the $500 loyalty money. Should I be targeting something like $58,000 - $5,800 - $2000 = $50,200 for selling price? In the LH calculator, do I put $52,200 (MSRP -10%) as selling price and put $2,000 under taxed or untaxed incentives? Looking at a 3 yr/36K lease with $0 DAS and trying to see if something around $600/mo + tax is feasible or out of the question.
By the way, the other car I’m considering is an Audi S4, also lightly loaded. I keep hearing that M340i leases much better than the S4 but the lease incentives, MF and residuals are very comparable. So unless dealer discounts are significantly greater on the Bimmer, I don’t see how they could lease that differently. In fact, if I add AudiCare, S4 Premium or Premium+ have 2% higher residual than the M340i (59% vs 57%) with BMW having $250 more in lease cash.
The M340 is one of the most popular cars on LH, one of the most discussed, and highly advertised in the Marketplace.
It’s always before
Are these numbers seen on LH? If not, that’s your answer. You can most definitely try to hack your own deal, but that would of course mean significantly more work on your part and based on your questions, there’s quite a lot of legwork to go.
Boils down to personal choice, and the only way you can compare apples-to-apples is to get the numbers from Edmunds.
Run/post the calculators and folks can opine more.
General question on lease swaps or takeovers listed on LH or SAL: apparently BMWFS allows this transfer since most BMW listings refer to a $500 plus tax fee for the transfer. Is the new lessee now fully responsible for everything like excess wear and tear, excess mileage, aftermarket mods, and the $495 disposition fee? Any pitfalls to watch for from the viewpoint of the new lessee?
I have searched the forum posts for signed deals in Southern California but I haven’t found many recent deals, especially on the S4. Looking to lease a lightly optioned car, either a Premium S4 (~$56K with AudiCare) or a RWD BMW M340i (~$57-58K). I have run the LH calculator with the lease terms and incentives from Edmunds and I am comfortable with the lease payments for both with $0 DAS for 3 yr/12K if I can get 10% off MSRP before incentives. I came up with target payments of $575/mo and $605/mo for the S4 and M340i, respectively (both before 9.5% tax).
Here’s what want to know: I keep reading that Bimmers lease much better than Audi but the lease terms for these cars suggest otherwise. The BMW has slightly better MF and incentive but the S4 has 2 points higher residual (59% vs 57% with the 1% bump for AudiCare). So unless the discounts are very different, I don’t see how the BMW leases better. BTW, between those cars at those payments, I’d rather go with the S4.
Is it the incentives or lowered residuals? When I leased my 2007 335i for 3 yr/12K, the residual was 63% and I remember Audi residuals were in the mid to high 50% range. I had not kept up with BMW leases lately but was surprised that it’s 6% lower now and that the S4 has a higher residual even before the AudiCare bump. I also remember each MSD lowering the MF by 0.00007 back then. Looks like it’s down to 0.00004 nowadays. I’m wondering whether putting down MSDs still makes sense with BMW.
Southern California’s a bit nuts for the m340s right now. Most dealers aren’t budging very far from MSRP, or are marking up the MF aggressively. I ended up going through a broker and getting one in the Bay area for -10% pre-incentive, and only slight markup on the financing (0.00106) a couple weeks ago.
I didn’t look as closely since I wasn’t nearly as interested, but S4s and S5s are pretty hard to find down here as well.
I got an unsolicited quote from a broker. When I plugged his payment into the LH calculator, it came out to about 9% off MSRP before incentives with the base MF. There’s also his $500 fee on top of that not-so-great deal. I’ll give it a shot on my own and see if I can get 10-11% off. If not, I might wait or go for a different car. I don’t have any preset deadlines since I’m keeping my current car for now. In fact, if I were smarter I wouldn’t even be looking to do a deal right now since there’s nowhere to drive other than drive 5 miles to and from work. Mark-up of money factor is a red line for me. I won’t consider any deal with a mark up. It’s just a blatant red flag that the dealer is looking to screw me. They’ll probably try to mark up the acquisition fee too in that case.
MF markup isn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as they’re making up for it in the discounts. As @spockvr6 says, in certain cases it might (edit after @mllcb42 's reply below) it is in your favor to take a marked up MF with a higher discount.
Not sure about other brands but acq fee can’t be marked up for BMWs. It’s set by BMWFS at $925.
