I wanted to get some insight into my first lease. I haven’t signed the lease yet and before doing so I wanted to get some feedback. Perhaps tell me how I can improve the terms, give me a thumbs up/thumbs down…so forth. Thank you
Year, Make, Model, and Trim: [2017 Mercedes Benz GLC300 2wd with Sport Package/Sunroof]
You can definitely do better. As @max_g stated, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services has better terms (58% residual at 36/12k and .00152 MF). After the autopay discount and 10 MSDs, you would be at a MF of .00072. Your adjusted cap cost is huge because it look like they have jammed $2,665 in aftermarkets on to the deal. These don’t lease particularly well, but I would not want to be over $500 per month on a vehicle with a $47,655 MSRP.
Would you be open to other competing models? I don’t know much about the current GLC market to know what a good selling price or cap cost should be.
That being said, I recall several forums (incl BMW) where people always complained about TX being such a in-competitive market…that will obviously limit how good of a deal you can get.
If #20 is a Doc Fee, it will never get eliminated. You can reduce the selling price by an equivalent amount to achieve the same goal, but the line item will never disappear or appear $0.00
What is “Transportation”? Are they delivering it to you over a very long distance?
I haven’t leased with MBFS in about three years, but AFAIK you could "residualize"anything that could be built on the website and added to the official MSRP. So prepaid maintenance and running boards (assuming you picked a stock # that had it factory installed) both counted…at a 72% residual, I was only paying 28% plus interest of MSRP.
Not sure this has been mentioned but he can’t residualise the running boards so they are either going to be an upfront cost or add quite a bit to the monthly.
I looked at both the GLC and X3 and ended up going with the X3 because at the time they were coming in over $150 less a month for the same priced car. Both great cars and will always be down to personal preference.
Good point, Ed. As a general item, any aftermarket items that can’t be residualized (tint, running boards, paint protection, and any other garbage dealers use to increase profit margins) are going to harm the value of a lease and should be avoided. I live in a warm weather state and every dealer adds tint, usually at $499 or $599, which is a massive scam. The only way to address it is to work out a larger discount from MSRP as they won’t remove those items from the contract. You have to ask yourself what would you pay for those items (tint is worth about $100 to me and probably about what their cost is) and seek to negotiate the difference off the price of the car.
The “transportation” fees I’ve seen are the result of the dealer not having the car in inventory and having to trade with another dealer and transport the car to their dealership. I still wouldn’t pay it.
In my experience, the GLC (in both coupe and sedan formats) do not lease overly well for what you are getting. BMW X3, Lexus NX both lease considerably better for similar MSRP cars. While I cannot speak for the rest of the country, in the NorthEast, the GLC is quite popular and thus dealer inventories tend to be on the lower side thus there is less room for negotiation as the dealer knows that if they do not make a deal with you, someone else will be by to buy/lease the car (and from the dealers perspective hopefully that person is not aware of leasehackr and will therefore be easier to make money on).
