TLDR; just a headache, move along 
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I get a lot of very polarized reactions on these things. If it’s not your cup of tea: shop however you want; there’s a seller out there for everyone.
That being said, I’m also seeing some interest in these posts so I’ll keep it up.
There’s a lot of active change occuring in the car sales industry. There are a lot of “legacy” players out there. Many dealerships across the USA still operate in ways that defy the laws of economics. As a result, these dealerships are slowly but surely being replaced by corporate groups and new owners that have a better grasp of what’s going on. There will always be anecdotal advice on this forum that has historically, and will continue to work, against bad dealerships, to score anomalous deals.
I joined this forum because I followed the prevailing advice on this forum to a T, and I drove away with a crazy deal! But I also invested multiple days, several trips to the dealer, a ton of discomfort, and ultimately had to make it through a ‘final boss’ negotiation. The whole thing just made no economic sense. I was just so baffled by where the dealer was expending its resources, all the while they weren’t moving very many cars. I kept racking my brain trying to understand how this place could be making any money, and then they went bankrupt and disappeared off the face of the earth.
If you’re going up against this kind of place, yeah, I wouldn’t blame anyone that tries to scrape anything they can together to prepare for a “fight” against “the boss”. But also, I’d offer up the advice that: the best way to win this fight is not to reward bad dealerships with your business. If you’re going to a place where you feel like you need to cross-check every number in the heat-of-the-moment, maybe just shop instead at a place that’s more straight-up from the get-go. You’re really better off going with whoever has the most transparent pricing, versus whoever is trying to lure you in with “lowest pricing”.
I’m in this for the future, and I believe that, one day, good players at dealerships will outpopulate the bad, and economics, reason, and technology will prevail in this industry.
The OTD prices are what drive supply and demand.
(or, total cost of leasing, in the leasing world)
If cars aren’t selling, dealers start putting big Dealer Discounts on them to move them.
Simultaneously, manufacturers notice cars aren’t selling and put big incentives on them. There’s just more of a lag time to respond, because this is only roughly monthly, versus the dealership discount that is assessed (often by different people) on each individual deal.
When manufacturer incentives pick up, dealers feel that they can relieve their dealer discount. The dealer see that manufacturer discount as essentially “picking up that gap” and adjusting the market for slow-sellers. This is what dealership managers that are really on their game do. They find out what is the “sweet spot” price that sells the most cars in their area, offering a dealer discount if necessary to get there, hoping that manufacturer incentives improve, which improves their margin while keeping the price of the cars at market value.
Not every car can be sold at a loss forever, and you want to get away from whacking a few unlucky people over the head to make up the difference. In an ideal world, you want to plan for cars to bring in a modest profit at a consistent pace. It’d be a more consistent, predictable business model - compare to a model where some people make out like bandits and some people pay $15k in dealer markup.
What bad dealership managers do is, instead of knowing the market for the cars like they should, they price each car using the “Profit” field of their DMS. They arbitrarily decide that they’ll make $2000 on each car, or lose $1200 on each car, or anywhere in between or in excess of those numbers. A lot of these guys will make blanket rules, too, and apply those adjustments unilaterally against every car in their inventory, regardless of the supply/demand curve for that particular car.
The “trick of the trade” here, so to speak, essentially tries to capitalize on hitting a scenario where a “bad dealership manager” is marking down cars, and pricing their inventory in a fixed “X amount off, or X percent off” style. Informed members of this community then essentially try to find out about new manufacturer incentives ASAP, such that they can try to “stack” the manufacturer and dealer discounts. Bad dealers succumb quickly to this strategy, because the total “dealer loss” is relatively inconsequential, compared to what they’ve had to let these cars go for before. This is the “OG Leasehackr” strategy (one that is ultimately good for bad dealers, and not so good for large crowds of deal-hunters). It’s capitalizing on a scenario where you can convince the dealership to increase their Dealer Discount, in the immediate wake of the Manufacturer’s Discount being increased on the same car.
It’s not really a strategy that’s informed by market-based average pricing, but a sniper tactic to try and get “The Lowest Price” as a one-off. Regardless, if you look hard enough, and time it just right, there’s no doubt this strategy will work. My overall prediction is, if sales managers get better at their job, pricing will eventually smooth out. You’ll see less extreme “double-stacking” of dealer/manufacturer or “triple-stacking” of dealer/manufacturer/state incentives, and eventually more smooth curves. Dealer discount slides up gradually as manufacturer or state incentives go away, and dealer discount slides down gradually as manufacturer or state incentives increase. The triple-stack gets increasingly relevant as EV adoption grows, as well. The smartest dealerships will react to these changing conditions more quickly than this forum, and the net positive for everyone is that lease prices themselves will become more consistent and normalized across the industry (i.e. less extreme month-to-month jumps).
We obviously aren’t participating in the same discussion as each other.
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Late to the thread, but, how do you have time to write an essay? Sheeesh
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I am very, very motivated, to get this right. For the present customers, and the future.
You also have an inherent conflict of interest that collides with the idea of a well-informed, self-sufficient consumer base.
I’m not saying that as an attack or to imply malice, just that there is an inherent bias because you make money off of offering a pathway for people to remain ignorant to the finer details. That’s a route that makes sense for some people. It does color your perspective here though.
Just as a reminder, you solicit people to provide market data for what deals are happening so that you can leverage them to negotiate with your supplying dealers and get improved pricing.
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You’re right 100%. But let me comfort you by stating that I do not have a long-term future as a lease broker.
I genuinely believe that the dealers and manufacturers should team up to find an effective way to do what I’m doing without me, and when they do it, it will put me out of business.
Medium-term, yeah, my goal is to profit off of the friction between the EV-leasing public, and the stone-age Dealerships that are the only place you can get these cars (similar business model to myev.com but with less overhead). And, I have an incentive for car dealers to stock more EVs, so I want them to have enough foresight to buy and deploy EVSE charge stations.
Running out of charger capacity has been one of the biggest bottlenecks to my business. Which is why my long-term strategy revolves around growing dealer’s ability to sell/charge more EVs, and to pump every cent of my earnings from the brokerage into investments surrounding EV charging.
Once this business model is eliminated, by like, a website directly from Hyundai that lets you calculate your exact lease payments, well, I plan to exit anything having to do with selling electric cars, and move to make money off of charging Electric Cars.
I’m the first to admit my lease broker model is temporary, as part of the larger industry shift to electrification and digitalization.
you don’t say.
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I’d love a world where I can give a dealer a monthly and DAS that I’ve calculated and have it work without having to work. Not once has this happened, however. They always start asking stupid questions such as “how did you arrive at this number?” And, since I have good manners most of the time, I feel obligated to answer. So I have found I have to know all the numbers in order to educate the salespeople, sales managers, and F&I people I interact with.
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I must confess…
The last few cars Ive gotten have purely been payment shopped. 
Oh the shame!
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My response to the numbers question depends on the tone in which it’s posed haha. Snarky ask=snarky answer. Genuine interest=explain how I got there. Fortunately I’ve only needed to use the former once or twice. Everyone else is surprised but then seems to appreciate the ease of the transaction.
The only point I can make/agree with from this entire thread:
But they probably copied the answer from someone who just did the long-division.
If I do, the rest of this post makes that very point.
moral of the story is that if you know to get to the payment and is within your target payment, it doesnt matter what tricks the dealer pulls to get to that payment. example-
I wanted to lease a Hyundai for 200/mo sign and drive so I sent them a lease offer with every single thing spelled out and how I got to that payment. they agreed. when I went to sign the lease, the way they calculated it wasn’t the same as I spelled out in my email, instead of discount the car 5% off msrp, they listed the agreed value above msrp and instead applied aloot of some dealer cash rebates that were $500 each that I had to sign for. I didn’t care because at the end of the day, I got to the same payment just a different way.
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So at the end of all of this, am I getting my McFlurry or not?!?
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You are? Is it all happening offline?
It’s never too late to stop.
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Just lol’d on my couch. My wife thinks I’m an idiot.
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I’m curious if @AA-NJ (who I don’t believe handles Ford) wants to do a post mortem on this deal:
TL;DR they did it your way, how do you think they did?
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I think this is what happens when you have too much modafinil and time. Still wondering why this thread is here 49 posts in.
Sorry for the delay in response, I was busy working with Hyundais!
1st, to directly answer the question on the linked deal, $539/mo with $1600 out of pocket for a $51k Ford Explorer sounds amazing, even if there was $2300 in equity from returning a Ford lease and $4500 in incentives.
If that guy had waited any longer, prices would have only gone up. Try and get a lease quote on a $51k Explorer and see if you can do any better.
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Second comment:
I’m reading over this thread, looking at the timetables, and reading Leasehackr’s 2021 Year in Review.
In July 2021, when this thread started, we were already in the midst of a global new car inventory shortage. Was suggesting more dealer discount really the move when finding a car was already the deal itself?
What I know, is that the advice I gave here held true in both a buyer’s market and a seller’s market. It worked for me to get a free car in a buyer’s market, and it worked for me to negotiate the lowest prices on new Hyundais in a seller’s market.
You can shop car leases like you shop short-term rental cars (Avis, Budget, etc). It is a defensible strategy. And in the absence of dealer discounts or manufacturer incentives, and in the presence of an inventory shortage, it more or less gets you the same result as information overload.
“Good enough” can be “good enough”, the deal can still be Leasehackr-worthy. Being informed of the absolute minimum might just create internal anguish for a buyer that can’t get there. That is definitely a thing.