Looking to check whether a lease deal I was offered is a ripoff or reasonable. This is my first lease, and I am located in WI. I have searched Edmunds and these forums, and have seen much lower monthly lease payments or estimated monthly lease payments for the same model. They are telling me that the market for leases significantly shifted in June 2021, and therefore they cant go any lower.
Here are the terms:
MSRP: $54,500
Trade-in: $2,500
DAS: $1,200
Mileage: 12k/yr
Residual: 53% (this seems very low to me, and they told me they have no control over it and cannot negotiate it higher)
$1000/mo on an A5? That sounds absolutely horrible. They’re right that the current market sucks, but that’s still crazy.
They’re also correct that they can’t change the rv.
We always recommend the following method before you ever contact a dealership. If you do all of the work up front, you’ll have a stress free dealer experience and set yourself for success.
Read Leasing 101 (Blog | 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 you’re 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.
Thank you for responding! I’ll check out the tips you gave. It definitely smelled like a horrible deal to me… maybe I’ll wait it out a bit since my current junker is running fine.
If you are comparing deals from 2 to 3 months ago, then that might probably be the case.
What is the pre-incentive discount/sale price? What incentives do you qualify for?
Audis normally have lower residuals compared to BMWs.
How is any of this info helpful to the OP? First off, the A4 is highly incentivized compared to the A5. Second, a sedan and Sportsback are in different classes. Third, without a breakdown of your deal, looking at just the monthly is useless. Who knows when you signed your deal.
They are telling me there are no incentives or deals right now due to the market. So the MSRP is the full MSRP (it’s the premium plus without nav, which they switched me to from a model with nav to get the payment below $900/month(!!)). The best the could do for me is getting me $2500 on the trade in of a really shitty 2010 Honda Civic that would normally be a $500 trade in value I’d guess.
This. Invest the $1200 DAS and maybe another month or so of payments into the Civic and get it into drivable condition. Chances are you’ll more than recover that added value when it comes time to sell it down the line. And waiting out the storm might save you $5k-$10k on the lease.
@NewLeaseWI even if Tanya Harding comes out and breaks your knee caps after you sign, still a hard pass.
Not only should you do this, but your Civic tells me “unless you wait out this stupid chip shortage, it will start talking about all the sins it has witnessed”
It’s a horrible time to lease. If you don’t need a car now, wait. If your Civic is at all fixable, keep driving it and check back in December.
If you absolutely must lease now and feel like you have to have a luxury car, why not consider a TLX? Can probably be leased in the ballpark of $400/mo effective payment, about 40% of what you’d pay for this A5. Could even go for an SH-AWD A-Spec if you want something with about the same level of sportiness. You’d save something like $20k+ over the next 3-years. That’s not insignificant. And coming from a ratty 11-yr old Civic, I find it hard to believe a TLX SH-AWD A-Spec is far too downmarket.
Forget the A5. You need the A4 which is literally identical without the hatch. I get it, I prefer the hatch too, but is it worth an extra $150-200/month?
You’ll save thousands, even ignoring the fact that your original deal is laughably, embarrassingly bad.
I get the market isn’t what it was, but my last A4 lease for a Premium Plus with Nav was $410/mi and $0 DAS, 10/39. I cashed it out with positive equity two months ago.
As a point of reference, you can get a 73k S5 Cabriolet for this price. In normal times a S5 sportback would be in the mid 500s to low 600s with minimal drive offs. The market is is crazy right now but if you can wait, it should correct itself in a couple months.
