Leasing cars is like talking to a girl. Just gotta be confident
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Hi Bob,
I don’t negotiate leases anymore. I’ll be glad to answer any questions.
Did you send this before or after initiating contact with the dealer?
After - he’s the same guy who leased me my last two cars (E-classes). At the same time, he’s also the one who told me in June and July that typical S-class leases right now go for $1700-$1800/mo, and was fairly insistent that a deal in the $1200s with $0 down was simply not possible.
Oddly enough, looks like he was right - until he wasn’t (due to Mercedes changing the MF/RV numbers the way they did in August, presumably to clear out any unsold 2018 inventory).
I’m pretty new to this leasing game so forgive me for asking the basics. In the calculator, the Agreed upon selling price that was negotiated with the dealer, does this number factor in any manufacture incentives like $4000 off or are incentives added to the Agreed Selling Price, hence making it lower?
Don’t let the dealer control. You are responsible for researching and determining all applicable incentives/rebates offered. Deduct the dealer incentives from the MSRP. Next, discount the MSRP by an appropriate % (e.g., 10%+) and, deduct that discount from the MSRP less incentives. This is the sell price that you need to negotiate with the dealer. Once you’ve agreed upon a sell price, it becomes the agreed upon value. You don’t add incentives to the agreed upon value. What is added are any items you wish to capitalize in the lease (e.g., dealer doc fee, acquisition fee, etc.). This gives the gross capitalized cost. From the gross cap, deduct cap reductions which may include customer cash incentives or rebates. The result is the net (adjusted) capitalized cost that is used to determine your lease payment.
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Delta you nailed it, I sold BMW for 12 years and your was always successful with a few of my poecolio customers. Dealers will take a skinny deal handed to them. Trying to get the deal though in person is painstaking. We would agree to an amount net net over invoice.
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High line non M, we would take 500 over on 3 4 x1. 6 and 7 1,000 over. Acq. Fee markup was included. Always at the buy rate.
I had to bring his offer which was in excel to the desk ankd it was done. We would make sure the lease was saved in desking and generate a deal# for the lease. Some special order deals might sit for 90 days ]
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Thanks for this. It helped me structure the numbers in a way I could use to send proposals out and understand how the calculator works. However, now that I’ve sent my numbers out to multiple dealers, I get responses like “your calculations are wrong” or “we can’t offer that MF because that’s the buy rate” or “the selling price differs depending on if you lease or purchase”. Then they try to sell me a different model when I tell them I don’t like their numbers. Grrr.
You may want to PM me with your lease proposal so I can check your calculations. It seems to me that this dealer is jacking you around (e.g., “we can’t offer that MF because that’s the buy rate”… that’s BS). Now, the selling price can differ due to different manufacturer to dealer incentives for leases and purchases. I would try another dealer.
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@delta737h Where does the ~15% discount off msrp come from? Is that your starting number for negotiations?
I would tell you, but he will get very upset 
If my memory serves me correctly, I believe there was a 2,250 manufacturer to dealer incentive included in that 15% discount off MSRP. The actual negotiated discount was about 11.5% off of MSRP in addition to the 2,250 incentive. The dealer eventually accepted the proposal. To be honest, though, I wasn’t particularly pleased with the proposal but, it was the best I could do given the circumstances at the time.