After countless hours of researching and educating myself on lease mechanics I think I’m ready to contact my local audi dealer. Is it ok to share the leasehackr calculator link to them with my work? I’d like to make the negotiation as painless as possible. BTW first time reaching out to Audi.
Also any other tips?
I got my eye on a Q5e premium plus in case anyone was curious.
Calc (with trade in excluded): CALCULATOR | LEASEHACKR
Know the 1st and 2nd rule of LH!
I’m new to leasing as well, but I’ve had a lot of experience in sales.
The less information you give them, the less they have to work off of to try to (at times) manipulate you into signing a deal that you may not like.
I’m guessing it’s the same with car sales/leasing. I would give bits of information at a time, and ideally, let the salesperson come to you.
Also, from my own experience, the person you speak to matters a lot. So be sure to look around at reviews as well as on the leasehackr forum to see who’d be the best to speak to at your dealer.
Don’t talk about fight club
Most sales guys don’t even breakdown the deals. They will walk over to the managers manager prints out paper and presents you with the offer. Normal person will say I want 2 grand off. Manger says no problem. Deal is done.
Knowing numbers and how to structure deals is fine. If you can’t negotiate. Or have the skills to do so you will never get to the number you want.
So cold call some places that don’t have the exact car you want and see how it goes
If you were selling cars and got sent a calculator link from a website dedicated to minimizing your profit, what would you think?
Send them the info in text format so you can be on the same page for every line item. No need for a calculator, they have a few they can use themselves
Post a link to your target deal here.
Thanks for that discussion link, somehow I missed it. A lot to think about 
Good god man do not use $10k of trade equity as a down payment.
Are you suggesting I sell private and use the cash to earn interest instead?
LH does not exist, especially when you are speaking to most dealers.
This means that the calculator does not exist.
Do not share the calculator link.
No, you can still trade your car in, but get them to cut you a check back for that equity. Or tell them to use $1k of the equity for DAS and cut you a check for $9k.
I see, this makes sense - thanks for the suggestion. My initial thought was that the trade in would reduce my taxable amount but it’s really not that much.
First, it’s a lot cleaner and easier to compare lease quotes without a trade because the dealer hasn’t seen your car, and in most cases, what you think it’s worth is more than they’re willing to pay. You open yourself up for a surprise when the dealer says “We can potentially offer you $10K in equity, but we’ll have to see it.” So you proceed to finalize all the numbers, go in, and they only offer $8K. All that time wasted by you.
Second, yes, generally speaking, you’ll be better off selling privately and keeping the cash to pay the payments while it earns interest. Or let the dealer cut you a check if there are tax savings.
Third, if you put down a significant chunk of cash and you total the car, you’re out that cash.
Fourth, and not talked about a lot, but there is a mental block a lot of people have when it comes to the next lease. If you put down $10K on this car, your payment is going to be hundreds less than what it would be the next time you lease a similar car, and a lot of people have a hard time either going backwards in quality of the car to get the same payment or paying hundreds more for the same car.
great feedback, thank you! I didn’t think about the third point you made.
And my hope is since the lease will end around December 2026 / January 2027 there will be a higher chance of deals around the holidays at that time.
NC is already a very favorable state to lease in from a tax standpoint without any trade in tax credit so definitely do not let any miniscule tax savings be a driver here.
You need to take the trade completely out of the deal, at least in the beginning. Make sure you fully understand the numbers and your target deal w/o any trade. Otherwise including the trade opens the door for all sorts of smoke and mirrors with the numbers from the dealer (especially true if you’re new to leasing and understanding how the numbers work etc.).
Do you also play poker with all your cards face up?
Why show them that?
Email the dealer to ask their best quotes with the breakdown of all their fees & discount. Once you get their quotes, change their number based on LH Calculator target you’re aiming.
You’ve taken the time to educate yourself and do the research. Now it’s time to make that hard work pay off. You have three options:
Simply let them know that you want a 27-month lease with payments of 243.00 and zero DAS per the above proposal.
Hire a broker.
Personally, I prefer to email a lease proposal. Things go so much smoother as dealers tend to get down to business and not engage in gamesmanship.
Lastly, don’t share your calculator or spreadsheet calculations. Only show them results… your lease proposal or, share only your bottom line result… N payments of $X each with DAS = $Y.
