This is all resolved by just not asking a dealer how much they want you to pay.
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I didn’t exactly do that! 
I know you always “preach” this as your advice.
But I’m in a fairly remote area (away from the big cities). And I find that I won’t hear back from a lot of dealers, hitting them up front with an aggressive offer from the get-go. If I go that way, I might not get any responses. And that would me leave me having to widen my search and driving even further.
So sometimes I try to engage a bit and have them invested. I mainly negotiated on the discount off MSRP (telling them how much I’m looking for). Maybe next time I’ll try your way, and start the process much earlier!
You would be similarly stuck in a Santa Fe leased last August.
Aside from a couple 13m BEV leases there’s no way for anyone to exit a brand new vehicle so soon without it being fiscally irresponsible.
In what way do you suppose you could exit a Santa Fe leased last August?
It’s your money. If it were mine and I wanted to serially lease for the reasons you stated above, I’d spend it on BMW or Mercedes because it’s like a 100% nicer car for like 20% more and the loyalty benefits are much better. Like a $100K+ Mercedes EQ can be in the $300s with loyalty.
The other spectrum is a Toyota or Honda with an extended warranty to avoid any big repair bills, bought brand new and owned for 5-6 years at an effective payment of around ~$250-300.
Leasing an Altima for an effective ~$400 sounds like a Bizarro Goldilocks solution. NTM if you repeated the Altima lease you’d have spent $28,000 to drive two Altimas for six years and returned them both with no equity.
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Are there any other ICE vehicles leasing cheaper right now?
I did spend a bit of time reading on the forums, and all the cheaper leases seem to be EV’s.
I appreciate the constructive criticism and insights!
I completely ignored brands like Mercedes in my search, thinking it would be out of my price range.
I’ll take these insights into consideration, in the future!
Are you willing to lease an EV? I don’t think any ICE Mercedes will be in your price range (assuming the price range is what your calculator shows for the Altima).
I have been hesitant to do so. Partly, because I didn’t want to spend on installing a Level 2 charger in my garage. I think that might run me about $2000 - $3000 (there is a $750 rebate from my Electric company, I think). I’m realizing that investment might be worth it, with all the EV deals I see. So, I’ll have to look into it for the future!
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I’ve seen C300 deals for like 20% more than his Altima deal, IIRC.
Once you’re in the ecosystem and have loyalty for the next one it’s even cheaper.
Some brands will pay for the installation; if not, the gas savings will pay for it quite quickly. Also, depending on the commute a regular outlet might be fine with an occasional L3 topup
I’m really taking this part of your advice to heart (at least for the next go around).
One of the things that I consider though is, in MA, we have excise tax. And it’s dependent on the value of the vehicle. So even though I could be driving around in a nicer luxury vehicle, for not a lot more on the monthly payments, when the excise tax bill comes, it’s going to hurt! So, if the Nissan is going to save me there, I kinda don’t mind driving the “lesser” car.
Are you aware of any such current offers? Or is there a good place online to look up stuff like that?
YMMV, but 20%, to me, is a significant change (even if the absolute amount is relatively low). But OP will do some research and will decide for themselves…
Ford, for one.
I’m sure some site/forum dedicated to EV keeps more tabs on this than I do.
A heavily discounted CLA/C-class is like a $38k selling price kind of car. How much more is excise tax on a 38k car vs 28k?
And if you lease an EV don’t forget about $3,500 in state rebates. That and the gas savings blow away the relatively tiny excise increase over the Altima.
The excise rate is $25 per $1,000 of your vehicle’s value . So it looks like that $10, 000 difference works out to $250 more per year. So around $750 difference over a 3 year lease.
Edit: not fully correct. Excise tax reduces each year. Down to 10% by year 5. Will update later with a chart that shows rate for each year.
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Yeah, I found the r/electricvehicles subreddit. Seems they would have good tabs on that kind of stuff there. I’m really thinking about this EV stuff for the future. It’s a lot to digest to get up to speed though. I imagine that’s one of the hurdles for the average consumer, who is not geeky or tech inclined…
Edit: Oh, and I found this website:
https://rebates4evchargers.com/
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Nobody knows for sure but I, for one, don’t think todays EV deals will be available in 3 years.
Even a PHEV charged at 110V every night sounds more appealing than the shitty gas mileage of an Altima.
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Yes, that’s correct (for me at least).
Also, after about 20 + year of accident free driving, I side-swiped one of those “divider” things off an exit last January, and after the insurance paid out $16, 000 to fix the damages, they (unsurprisingly) almost doubled my insurance cost. So that’s another reason, I am not too interested in a more expensive/luxury car. So I appreciate all the help/input. But I have pretty much settled on the Altima.
I appreciate all the help and input though!
Also, there are a few other questions, I have been meaning to ask the Hackrs. So rather than cluttering up the forums with new threads, I think I’ll drop them here.
@mllcb42 and @max_g I’ve always been curious: When you send out your offers, what level of detail to you get into? Do you include, for example, the money factor, and the residual, and lay out the entire calculation to show how you are getting to your price you want to pay?
I would love to see an example from an experienced Hackr what such an email looks like!
There’s no right or wrong answer to this, everyone has different negotiating styles. Personally I always go with just the terms, payment, and DAS, while others may like to lay out every little detail.
“Hello Mr. Dealer, I am interested in your 2025 Bugatti Tourbillion, stock #123456. My zip code is 98765. On a 36 mo / 10k mi. lease, if you can do $1000/mo with $2,500 total due at signing then I can be there by 6pm tonight to sign. This includes X, Y, and Z incentives.”
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