I feel like getting a good deal on lease is very hard in Texas regardless of the fact that texas people should pay full tax on a lease. I’m talking about base price before tax.
I live in DFW metropolitan where there are 5 Mercedes dealers in the area and I can’t even come closer to the deal what I’ve seen from Leasehackr. 3 of the 5 dealers are ignoring my email as I was telleing them that I’m looking for 20% from E class loaner which is not an impossible number not to mention that I didn’t even talked about MF and MSDs to them.
Not only for Mercedes, majority of the dealerships I dealt with doesn’t seem to be interested in selling vehicles below cost from my experience and regional incentives from the manufacturer are always below average compared to other regions in the country.
Is this because simply people in the area are more affluent than other area? I’ve seen lots of my coworkers actually paying a lot more amount of money on the car lease and they don’t seem to be care much about it.
Moreover, I can’t find a broker on leasehackr specialized in TX market even though Texas seems very big market for a car.
I’m from the UK but have lived in Houston for a year and I see the exact same issues here.
I think for the higher end brands there’s a bad combination of not enough competition and too many people with money lining up to pay MSRP. Most people wouldn’t even consider cross shopping dealers in Houston and Dallas even though they are 200 miles apart, and most of the high end dealers are of course in the major cities. Sewell own a few dealers here with Mercedes, Audi, Infiniti, etc and the competition is minimal with a lot of chains controlling the market. The used market is much more competitive, but you still have the same tax issue.
I feel your pain. I am at DFW area. In my case I flew to Chicago for my car. I got F-Pace at Jaguar Elmhurst. I contacted all Jags dealerships in TX. Their pricing is insane and they dont want to really negotiate.
TX must be the worst place to lease a car. The dealers aren’t offering discounts, they pocket some of the incentives competition is minimal and customers are more than happy to pay MSRP. They don’t even go into Onepay’s and MSDs.
I recently was offered a Onepay but the discount was less than the typical cost of capital. They couldn’t possibly expect me to take such an awful deal.
I used to live in Texas and found buying or leasing cars at a significant discount was a challenge. In Houston, the luxury car dealers were dominated by a few players and are highly concentrated. Sonic owns Momentum BMW and West Houston BMW, while Advantage was owned by another group. The Houston Metroplex is home to 6.7 Million people and has 8 BMW Dealers. Los Angeles Metroplex is home to 13.5 Million people and has about 24 BMW dealers. The tax situation only makes things worse from a leasing perspective.
The attempts to maintain these pseudo monopolies can also border on the egregious. A Mercedes dealer in TX sued a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway (which owns dealerships) from opening a new MB store. Based on an old statute which bars the manufacturer from owning or operating dealerships in TX.
Now, Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t own Mercedes Benz or Daimler AG. So what’s the issue or the basis for the lawsuit? Get this: BH owns a company that manufactures
…
RVs.
Can’t make this stuff up. They know they probably won’t win. But they’ll spend a ton of money pursuing this just to delay the other store from opening
Depends on the price and brand, tax credit becomes almost a must if you want to get a decent deal. They come and go based on what the captives want to do. It’s not time specific or even models or trims. Just have to check with the dealership to see if they have it. I find it easier to mass emails to all surrounding dealership from Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio and hope someone will send a decent lease quote and then you can shop around.
I was wondering about tax credits myself. In April this year I noticed Sewell Audi and Infiniti in Houston were incentivising with tax credits. Does this mean next April they will do the same, will this likely be across all Sewell dealers across Texas? Do the dealers themselves decide when they will dole them out? Will it only be once a year?
Everything I’ve searched for seems to point to all the recent up and downs with EV tax credits, and almost nothing about the general tax credits.
Texas taxes make it more challenging to get a hackr worthy deal, but it’s still fairly possible.
If you want new, you have to do your research on which dealer will most likely give you the best deal and shop around. You’re gonna have a tough time overall, but don’t waste to much time with Sewell and Park Place though, unless you hit them right when they need that last unit to make their numbers.
For loaners, expand your radius… look for cars around the country, the savings is well worth the drive.
I know driving a several hundred miles on a leased vehicle is not convenient for anyone, but we’re here to hack, which is already an inconvenience of it is own.
Avoid Park place and Swell then what dealerships left? Sonic? Ewing? They are all the same…
I feel like Crest is more workable but they don’t have MB or BMW dealership in my area…
I’m more than willing to go out of state and drive back to home but I just don’t feel like New Mexico, Louisiana, or Oklahoma dealerships will have killer deals than TX dealers.
I might be wrong, but if you go out of state, you will have to pay full tax so for a car that prices at $50,000 you will have discount the car at least another $3000 to cover it.
Texas taxes make it more challenging to get a hackr worthy deal, but it’s still fairly possible.
Did you actually read any of the posts? Several knowledgeable people posted about the added difficulties of getting deals here compared to a lot of other states and you call them out and then agree with them a couple of sentences later. Also, if your argument that leasing in Texas isn’t bad but your recommendation is to go out of state? Genius advice.
I suggested expanding their radius for loaner vehicles, since they’re not as easy to go pick up as a new car. That is just common knowledge if you know what you’re looking for.
I truly believe there are some great deals to be had in the DFW market or Houston for certain brands.
Never used tax credits and have gotten way better deals than others in “very competitive” markets, despite paying tax on full sales price of the car.
I live in Houston and since Memorial Day I bought a car and leased a car locally. As others have said, some dealerships think they are selling spaceships rather than cars and you can’t be afraid of walking out. However, I found that when you come off as a real buyer they will eventually work with you. For example, I test drove a SQ5 at one of the Sonic locations and afterwards they gave me a lease quote. I questioned the numbers and asked about residual and money factor and when the salesman came back, he actually gave me a higher price because he said they made a mistake when initially pricing. I stood up and told the salesman that he should tell his manager to stop insulting their customers by providing “discounted”sales prices that is actually higher than advertised for that particular car on their website and then walked out.
The next day, another manager called me back, said he would sell me the car at 11 percent off msrp, base money factor, and then ran numbers for me with msd’s. As most people know on this site, Audi’s don’t lease well so the payment was still high so I asked him about sales tax credits. He immediately offered me credits for 5 of the 6.25 percent. He even through I’m Audicare for no charge. After sending me the numbers in writing, I just couldn’t pull the trigger on the lease due to the payment (even with msd’s the MF was high) so I called him and said if he would sell me the car for the same drive off amount as my loaded adj cap cost on the lease I would buy the car. He made the obvious observation that he couldn’t do it because of the tax credit that won’t apply to a purchase. End of the day, he ended up discounting the car further to cover most the sales tax and I drove the dealership, wrote a check for the car and was out of there in an hour.
I also leased a qx60 from Sewell. My wife test drove one at another dealership and later that day I texted the salesman about pricing. Of course, they started fucking with me with crazy pricing. I told him as much and he texted me back his managers “final”price. I then sent an internet inquiry to Sewell and west Houston and west Houston emailed me back an initial offer better than the original dealership. Sewell called me and we talked for 20 minutes and had a good conversation it seemed we were in the ball park. Finally, I got frustrated because the pricing components we were talking were not equating to the payment he was giving me. I thanked him and hung up. He texted me 20 minutes later and wanted to know what it would take. I texted back the number. Another 20 minutes later he replied with a Better offer. I said no. 5 minutes later they agreed. Unfortunately, no infinity sales tax credits in may, but I ended up with a $51k msrp qx60 with only first payment and msd due at signing and 38 more payments at 375 per month (65 of which is sales tax since no credits). Of course 2 days later the original dealership called back wanted to deal more.
My bottom line in Houston is that yes, it is more difficult to get a deal due to the sales tax law, but just like anywhere else, if you are patient, not desperate, professional and not afraid to walk you can get a satisafactory deal.
I knew I wanted a non-base F-Type. And in addition to this, I wanted an F-Type from the previous year as they had very good incentives.
When I began my search, there were around 25 F-Types in the state that met my criteria. I knew that most of these had been on the lot for quite some time as the dealerships were already filling up with 2018 models.
I contacted each and every dealer in the state to inquire upon their 2017 models. I kid you not: some of the offers I received were HIGHER than out-of-state offers on 2018 models!
My favorite was from one of the DFW dealerships. It was a 2017 F-Type S (not even an R). I believe it was something around a 93k MSRP. For a 36 month, 15k per year lease they wanted 1250 per month with around 6k down. When I asked them to give me the breakdown, the salesman replied with some cocky response about how he isn’t in this business to give away cars.
I then hired a broker. He tried reaching out to just about every other dealership in the country with remaining 2017 models. Most simply wouldn’t work with Texas residents due to our ridiculous tax structure.
I ended up coming to a decent deal with Jaguar Houston Central on one of their remaining 2017 models. They actually had it pretty heavily discounted and I talked them down to base money factor. But paying 6.25% sales tax on a 100k dollar car still really jacks up the equivalent monthly payment.
I hope that Texas decides to get with the times and update their lease tax structure like most of the other states have it.
From what I understand, when I got my Impreza, the finance guy said it all depends on the captives. So in my case, Chase determines when to give it out and what to give it out to. The dealership don’t control that at all and he said there’s really no set schedule for it. So what they give last April, doesnt mean you will get it next April. But I believe, most dealership will have some tax credit at the end of year to use.
can someone explain to me the tax credit game in Tx ?
My understanding is you pay taxes on the whole price of the car, not just the payment. But then some here get a tax credit of some sort to offset but it’s at dealers discretion? Can someone explain it who’s been through it?
I’m currently looking for an F-type in San Antonio and am in the exact same situation you describe. Could you give me some pointers/advice and maybe even the deal you got with the dealership in Houston?
