New York State Here…I know the special on Lexus IS ends tonight 
bad timing. Still interested in the car…
Wondering what a good deal on this car would be…MSRP is roughly $49,000-50,000.
Residual? Money Factor?
Initially I was looking at Lcertified 2014, 2015…but I thinking leasing older cars is a bad decision given the steep decline in residual value…correct me if I’m wrong? Might as well just go with the new, right?
You can only lease new cars. You can’t lease used cars. Also wait one more day as November is the best month to lease Lexus.
@Alex_Poberezhskiy you can in fact lease used cars on many models. Not all dealers participate, but it is certainly doable. Lexus even advertises it on its website.
@stormborn522 I’ve looked into preowned leases before but only at arms length. Conceptually, they should be an opportunity for pretty good deals. After all, much of the depreciation occurs in the first couple of years. Unfortunately, deals I’ve seen have not been much better than deals on a new lease. Maybe dealers factor in a lot of wiggle room for negotiations.
The biggest issue is the lack of information on the open market. With new cars, a little bit of research can net you much of the information that you need, such as money factor and residual. This can vary on preowned.
Your best bet if you want to try your luck is to figure out a lease deal on a new model, then use that as ammo to try and negotiate a preowned deal. That’s how I intend to approach my next Lexus lease.
The other issue with leasing preowned is the higher maintenance costs. You may have to change tires/brakes/fluids.
Second this. Also, Lexus only offers a 3 year, 15k miles a year lease for pre-owned. In my experience, BMW is a lot better with pre-owned leasing.
thanks for the reply. Conceptually I would think the lease deals would be worse with a pre-owned vs. new. The residual value will drastically decrease as time passes…for example a 2016 new car with a 70% residual value over 3 years vs. 2014 certified preowned with a 50% residual value after 5 years.
@stormborn522 Conceptually, I’d argue the opposite. As an example, compare a 2 year lease and a 3 or 4 year lease. The residual on the 2 year might be 70%, the three might be 60, and 4 might be 52 (I’m just using made up numbers). As you can see, the majority of the depreciation happens up front (30% in the first two years, only another 18% over the next two). So, if you can buy the car after the first owner took the the biggest hit, you should be better.
In reality, mark ups on used cars and higher money factors raise the price of a used lease, at least based on posted prices. Now, if dealers are willing to negotiate aggressively, that can certainly sweeten the deal.