Little bit of a different deal mainly because my wife’s car has some serious negative equity we’re just trying to get out from under it… When we bought it we were in a little bit different financial situation five or six years ago and now we’re just ready to move on before it crosses 100,000 miles. We have been to several dealerships and the trade in value is pretty much the same across the board right at 6500 but we owe 14,100 on it, so $7600 is negative equity must be applied the deal.
We spent a couple hours at a GMC dealership last night (we have actually been to two different dealerships and neither could get us under our target of $600/mo) test driving several Acadia‘s crunching numbers for another 1 to 2 hours and ultimately we ended up leaving because we have a hard budget that we want to stay under and they just could not get there and it made me wonder if we were just asking for too much. They called today with a little bit better deal saying it’s the last day of the month or calendar and I’m just trying to figure out is this the best we can do. I do realize we’re gonna pay a couple hundred dollars more a month for the negative equity I totally get it.
2021 GMC Acadia SLE
MSRP: $38,535
Sales Price: $33,506
Rebate: $3000
Gov’t Fee: $677.50
Process Fee: $799
Accessories: $1,199 (changing cloth to leather)
Gross Cap Cost: $45,429.03
Trade allowance: $6500
Cash Cap Reduction: $2000
Cap Cost Reduction: $5000
Adjusted Cap Cost: $40,429.03
MF: .00088 (2.11%)
RV: 56%
48 mos / 12k miles
$599/mo tax included
We liked the SLT but the only difference between SLT & SLE is leather and navigation but we use the carplay and Google maps for all navigation anyway.
Feels like a decent deal since they let us leave but not 100% sure.
Can you help me understand why? We were willing to sign it last night and they wouldn’t do it…they literally let us walk away after driving an hour to get there, knowing we may not be back.
Out of morbid curiosity…what is this 6 year+ old vehicle with 100k miles that you owe $14k on? And what is wrong with it that you’re desperate to lease a base rental car spec Acadia for $600 a month for five years?!
Anyway this deal is bad in many ways. Why would you pay an unresidualized $1,199 for leather on an SLE when the SLT comes standard with leather and typically has higher incentives attached to it? What are incentives, MF and RV of each model? Why are you targeting an Acadia specifically?
This smacks of ‘little to no research done’, especially because the SLT has way more features and upgrades vs. the SLE than just leather and navigation. Also it’s your job to figure out how much a lease is, not the dealer’s. Sorry if I am off base.
It’s a 2016 Chrysler Town and Country. Wife wants something different…pointless to argue with her about it.
I have tried to do research but I just don’t fully understand them tbh. She wants leather, we tried to run numbers on a SLT and they were even worse. Trust me we spent two hours there last night after multiple test drives and we spent three hours at another dealership the night before and we couldn’t get any SLE or SLT under 600 with 1500 or 2000 down… I’ve also been on the phone with three or four other dealerships in the south Florida area and they all basically said the same thing no deal.
We were targeting the Acadia because it seem like they have the lowest advertised prices and knowing we have to tack on $200 plus a month for negative equity we decided to test drive it and she liked it. She wouldn’t mind having another minivan but there are no good minivan lease specials out there currently we have looked at both Pacifica and Honda and also Toyota and they are no go even higher payments.
You should definitely avoid a 48 month term. You’re just setting yourself up for out of warranty costs and wear/tear items for an additional year. There’s a pretty good dealer discount here but it’s being negated by $1,200 dollars worth of Katzkin crap “leather” that is amortized instead of residualized. Totally not worth it. I don’t know what your hard budget cap is but you need to realize that over a more rational lease term like 36 months you’re going to be carrying over $200 a month in negative equity alone. The dealer was obviously trying to stretch that out, but usually after 36/39 months on a GM lease that leads to diminished returns.
I don’t think this is the case… Most of the SLT‘s are over 40K even if they discounted them a couple thousand and we put down another 2000 by the time they add 3000 back in taxes and fees and our 7500 we’re back up to 40 5K and sales price and GMC doesn’t have 0% 84 months financing again we have a hard stop on our budget so we would be paying probably mid sixes.
The mileage is not the issue we have vetted that. Sorry I meant to say that we bought the car with high miles she definitely doesn’t drive more than 12,000 miles a year or work is about 2 miles from our house. We calculate that she drives about 10,000 miles a year maybe 11 tops since we take this car on vacation trips.
We didn’t really want to finance because we want to be out from under the negative equity sooner rather than later and we felt like the leasing would do that for us.
Respectfully, you weren’t crunching numbers… The dealership was playing three card monte with you for a couple of hours trying to make the puzzle pieces fit to whatever number you told them you wanted to pay per month. Read the leasing 101 primer to get a better understanding of how a lease works and how to structure a deal yourself. Negotiate exclusively via email/phone until you find a deal that you are comfortable taking. I consider myself somewhat well versed in the dark art of negative equity, but I don’t think I’d try to bury 7 grand into anything outside of a Bolt if I was desperate for some reason to get out of something that was undriveable.
When I carry negative equity into a new lease, I would want that lease to be as short, with as low a MF as possible. The objective should be to shed the negative equity, even if it means a compromise on the vehicle. I am a Acadia fan but it doesn’t meet either of those requirements. I would look at brands that support MSD to pay down the MF to near 0. Something like a Blazer 2LT has a .00006 MF right now, which is .14% versus 2.11%
Sounds like we = the dealership. Why aren’t you running numbers yourself?
Are you aware that SLT has a lower MF than SLE? Did you run the numbers on a base no options SLT? YES they do exist but you need to actually look for them.
Is your wife really going to be happy in a rental car spec Acadia or are you going to be trying to roll $10k into another lease a year down the road?
Slow your roll until you get a handle on what you’re doing
Same RV and incentives as well. That’s definitely the play in terms of bang for your buck at the moment. And I think OP should know this because someone on the Edmunds forum is painting a very similar picture.
Typically a base no options SLT is the best leasing GMC trim regardless of model if looking at MSRP vs payment. Then throw in the thousands of negative equity with the MF being half of an SLE. This entire thing stinks but that’s the play I’d make.
But I’m sure that the dealer was quoting a $50k SLT that they had in stock and how many sales guys understand how a lease payment is calculated let alone the nuances like this.
Edit: you may also want to look at a demo if you can find one. A low or no option SLT demo at a 14-16% discount would be my goal.
You also might want to check with Carvana/Vroom/Etc on your car’s value. I put in an imaginary (but clean) middle of the line trim 2016 T and C with 90k miles into Carvana and I got about 12,000 as my offer.
That’s an idea… Although maximum LTV might play a role depending on the price of the car too.