A broker will always get you close to the best deal possible on a specific car in a specific month. Anyone coming here looking for the best <insert brand/models> having done no legwork will be best served by a broker.
What a broker won’t do is help you find the right car to lease in that perfect month when the planets align. They (justly) don’t want to talk to you until you are ready to lease this month.Biding your time and reading is where the best hacks are and you’re only going to get there spending time on the forum.
It’s not that we don’t want to talk to you, but we do ask that your expectations are reasonable and that you be forthright with us and by extension treat our time like you’d treat your own.
There are clients I still keep in touch with regularly months, and even years after our last business transaction.
Personally I believe LH is a platform for discourse about how to get the best deal.
If you’re shopping today, a broker that has an established legitimate business can likely offer you a better deal than you’ll find no matter how hard you shop.
Don’t get me wrong, a determined customer can still find a deal because ultimately the broker is just offering numbers that a store is willing to take … It’s just less common right now.
There was a thread about an Acura either today or yesterday and that guy got a great deal without using a broker. There are still deals out there you just have to be flexible and ready to jump.
Right now, it’s more broker skewed because some of us can still offer consistent and repeatable deals in this bad market.
However, the car world really isn’t set up for MSRP sales because inventory and dealer profitability are mostly based on flow through. If you sell more, you get more cars and more desirable builds.
The stores that try to maintain the gross profit model are going to get slaughtered once inventory AND production get somewhat normal.
Either at the end of this year or next spring I think you’ll see the forum shift again to more consumer discussion because there will be more cars and dealers are going to need to move metal.
That number was absolutely wild. Could make sense, though. Paragon Acura is currently showing 90 TLXs in stock and 12 a-specs. Could have been trying to dump a unit ahead of quarter/month end. That dealer is notorious for hitting people over the head.
I don’t think it’s become that. Many Trusted Hackrs offer their feedback, experiences, and recommendations in an effort to continue building a community of Hackrs . Unfortunately the majority of those recommendations are for members to educate themselves since so many people expect to be spoon fed deals. With many people unwilling to put in the legwork, the increasing number of recommendations to use a broker are the product of that.
If you would have told me 2 years ago that a Tacoma with an 83% RV would be a fantastic buy at lease end or selling one 3rd party would net you almost $7K in equity I would’ve asked if you had a bridge to sell me too.
I’ve been here for a couple of years, albeit relatively quiet. I’ve learned a lot and I’ll admit that I’ve probably not been too helpful to people. This forum has driven me to do a lot of research to try to understand how lease deals work and what’s in it for dealers. During that time I’ve come up with a list of brokers I’d definitely trust.
I don’t really ask “is this a good deal” because I’ve done all the legwork and kind of have an idea of what would be good for me. No point in asking other people’s opinions and then feeling bad about it. I leased a car on Thursday. I was about to start working with a LH broker but my local dealer got the exact car I wanted in stock that day and agreed to my terms.
Yes, I see a lot of broker ads here, but that’s what the market is now. Either do the work or pay someone to do it for you. Many times it’s better for you financially to pay someone to do it for you. People seem to expect members here to go do all the work for them and then post where and when to get the deals. That may lead you to think that the forum is not very helpful.
When a newbie or someone not well versed in leasing asks for feedback on their deal, I usually suggest they check broker deals in the “Marketplace” for comparison with regards to figuring out a reasonable target price/discount. Given current market conditions, there have not been a lot of recent shared deals on cars that used to lease well before this chip shortage.
When I was looking to get into a new lease back in April/May (right before inventory issues got worse), I browsed broker deals and the shared deals section for current pricing on the car I was looking to get into. It did help set a baseline, although I had an idea of what a reasonable pre-incentive discount was at the time in my area.
Anyway, there is a thread from a noob asking whether $299/month for an Accord is a good deal. A bunch of folks, including myself, have provided valuable info to the member. However, their main response is that the dealer won’t provide them with a breakdown and they have no clue how leasing works. This seems to have become the norm on this forum - folks expecting to be spoon fed.
I’m not sure if this is the case, but OP are you asking because someone said your deal could have just been achieved with a broker?
For what it’s worth, I think some brokers here and good and some maybe not so much. I would gladly pay a fee to a broker that is upfront if it saves me all the work and I didn’t have time. There was one on here who was sketchy, but for the most part they’re fine. If anything, given how few comps there are these days, the broker listings are super helpful for deciding if you’re in the right ballpark.
Most of the time “Ask the Hackrs” is filled with threads containing terrible offers from dealers that people want to learn how to improve (to which advice is not taken very often) or want validation to sign because “its the best one they have.” We can continue to give advice of asking for a certain % pre-incentive discount and finding out the Money Factor and Residual Value, but at the end of the day there is so much we can do. Nevertheless, I am not compensated at all for recommending a broker.
Oftentimes, and especially in the current market, brokers do have better deals than what consumers can find at their local dealerships. Working with a broker is supposed to remove the hassle of negotiating with a salesperson, GSM, and GM trying to get to a target deal based on previous data points. I personally enjoy the hunt for a unicorn, but there are others that don’t. However, isn’t everybody looking for the best deal?
People also need to understand that on both sides it has financially make sense. A dealership has to turn some sort of a profit on a deal in order to continue running their business, paying employees, etc.
People tend to go to brokers, see the deal they’re offering and when they hack a lower deal than advertised by the broker, they go and bad mouth them. I just wish people understood that car dealers can not have every car they sell be a loss for them, that is not how any business could sustain itself.
A good broker will give you a damn good deal especially with no legwork, if you did do the legwork then maybe you can get it lower but, that is up to the person and the end of the day.
The real issue here is too many posters want a deal with Little or zero work.
Only way is through a broker.
and for @sabal
I’ve seen many cases here where the deal searcher badgers the broker for the Dealer that is offering that deal and gets a lower (Or perceived lower) deal at that dealer by starting with the broker number and then bad mouths the broker for not getting ‘that’ deal.
As a new member, I just signed up to ask questions and look around. See what other people are leasing/purchasing as I like variety and sometimes not sure what I really “want”
Its easy and I bet tons of traffic is from people who Lurk… As for deals, getting a broker or even copying a deal must be very common. I think it takes some thick skin for people to post their own deals and have people comment about how they could have saved 50 cents if they did this or that…
Those comments will just drive people not to post their “deals” and data points will be lost.
I have always seen at least multiple useful responses to a deal evaluation request with basic research included. “How can I get the best deal for X car this month” is best served by a broker, period.
At the end of the day, someone out there is always going to get a better deal than you. As long you are happy with your deal, it should not matter if someone thinks you could have saved 50 cents or $1 dollar.
IMO, people want a lease deal, but don’t want to do the work. And most excellent lease deals cannot be replicated at the same dealer.
So best course of action is broker recommendation.
Honestly, the difference between best broker deals is only about 1% extra off in addition to the fee. Say 2-3% overall. A broker is worth it - saving time and getting a guaranteed outcome.
So if you use a broker you are “lazy”. I never would endorse a broker until I seen how bad these dealerships were with quotes and so on. I reached out to numerous dealers just to get denied or not even a answer. Broker isn’t about being lazy it’s about who can get the car the cheapest and easiest way. 9/10 people don’t secure a good deal by themselves.
