So my time is coming to turn in my lease of a Lexus ES 350 2018. Because I don’t trust dealerships I’m highly considering selling the car and hopefully making a positive amount on it. Pay off amount is 22,000. Carmax and Carvana have offered 24-25k. This car is in great condition and only has 22k miles. Is this the right choice? I’m new to this I’m open to all feedback as I would like to save myself as much money. Yes I have perfect credit and this will be my 3rd lexus.
I understand the idea of the 1% rule. No money down. Only pay first month. (Not sure if dealer fees can be added into the monthly lease payments) but I want to know if it’s possible to get what I’m looking for.
I’ve read some damn impressive deals here. So I was wondering if I could also and what you guys thought of what I would think is an optimal deal vs what you guys think is.
I’m looking to jump into another lease for the 2021 ES 350. I built it on the website and the total was 45k. I’m pretty positive it can be brought down but I’m not sure how much before I come off disrespectful.
What I was hoping was if I could end up with monthly payments of 350$. I could do 380. But I refuse to hit 400.
What do you guys think? I apologize if this post is disorganized and not very well thought out. I’m learning as I go. Thank you for your time.
We always recommend the following method before you ever contact a dealership. If you do all of the work up front, you’ll have a stress free dealer experience and set yourself for success.
Read Leasing 101 (Blog | LEASEHACKR) to understand how to calculate a lease payment and the variables. Monthly payment is an output, not an input!!
Pick a specific vehicle that you want to target
Gather the current MF, RV and incentives from Edmunds forums for your zip code
Research the LH marketplace and other deals that have been made recently on your vehicle - what was their pre-incentive discount? How did their lease terms differ?
Plug your numbers into the LH calculator, and use a pre-incentive discount similar to what you have seen
Create a target deal, this is what you’re trying to negotiate to. You can try different terms, selling price discount, etc. and see how your monthly payment is affected. It is also possible that different trims of your vehicle may have different MF and RV (i.e. this is very common with GM), so make sure that you look into that. Come up with a set of inputs that give you the output that you want - your desired monthly payment.
With a target price determined, you now have a deal to pursue and compare dealer offers against. More importantly, you have a solid foundation to work from.
Calculate your buyout AND be aware of the tax burden upon selling it to carmax/3p. During your negotiation of the new lease, I would not let the dealer know about you trade in, until you get them to agree to your target deal. If the dealer is aware of a positive trade-in deal, you might get the deal you want on the new ES, but at the cost of the positive equity on the old deal.
You need to step back and spend some time reading.
The best place to start is
Please read links in there such as “how to calculate payments” and other helpful articles.
It might seem like a lot but TBH there are fewer <60 minute exercises which will save you so much time, money and anxiety over your driving lifetime.
It may also save you (after your negotiations with LH input) inside the finance office where no one can from the internet can really help you.
Remember, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Going around offering x% off sticker without knowing the rest of the pieces is a good way to get rippled off without even realizing it.
Format a target deal:
List out the pre-incentive
List out the base mF and residual term (From edmunds lease forums)
List out all the incentives you qualify for.
Figure out if you want to do MSDs and of course rule out any security deposits
You can then plug everything into the lease calc, and then reach out to dealers with the stock#s in mind and begin the process.
They are open to work the numbers anyway they’d like as long as they keep within the parameters of your target deal.
Working this soley on discount wont help on a lease:
You want 11%, fine I’m game, but now I’m gonna inflate the base mF to infinity and now that discount i gave you is meaningless
I’ve actually done most of this. I sent an email to one dealership to test myself out.
The offer I was given was 499 a month/10k/39 with no down.
I replied saying this was out of my price range as I was looking for something closer to 380-390 a month. I asked him if he could share the RV and MF(I said I understood if he couldn’t for this one) I also let him know I would be doing no money down (2nd time).
I was replied with 399 a month but 2k down best offer. He would also erase the email thread every time he replied.
I didn’t bother replying. My issue is not knowing how to steer the conversation without coming off disrespectful towards my target price. I honestly don’t think I’m being unreasonable looking for 380-390 a month for a 44k car, nothing down. Or am I misinformed?
First contact I asked them for a quote for a lease deal with just drive off fees. 39 months/10k miles on a vehicle from their inventory and I also pasted the link.
