I’m about a year or two away from leasing a vehicle and I’ve decided that I don’t particularly care much about the vehicle itself. I’ll be happy with any newish, luxury EV sedan. Something in the $60-120K MSRP range. Within that range, I actually am fairly insensitive to price. All I want is the best possible deal (e.g. highest lease hacker score). For example I’d take a 120K vehicle with a lease hacker score of 15 over a 60K with a score of 9. But I’m not that rigid. If the 60K had a score of 13, I’d probably go with that.
I’m fine paying a broker and I’d just include that in the effective cost.
So given that I just want an amazing deal and don’t care much about the car, how would you suggest I go about it?
Don’t care about the vehicle you lease? You’ll fit in great here!
Some just go with brokers to make things easy. Some take brokers deals and try to get dealers to match to save on the broker fee (lol). Some try to do it on their own.
I’d look at the marketplace and recent signed deals to see what the market is when you are ready to go. It’s usually easy to tell what’s really hackable based on how many are discussing that vehicle in particular.
Almost impossible to know. Lease programs are not known for next month, let alone two years from now. Besides that, who knows what may happen to the broader market in that time period either.
I’d encourage you to look about a month or two before you want to lease to get an idea of what makes / models are leasing well. In addition to that I’d strongly lower the importance your placing on the LH score in evaluating a deal.
In the meantime you can do a few small things to make sure you are eligible for the most incentives possible. ( Costco, AAA, PenFed account ) and a few others I am most likely forgetting off the top of my head.
If all you care is beating the game by achieve high LH score with an EV it’s easier to do with a $60k (or even lower like $50k) car than a $120k car due to $7500 federal rebate that is flat regardless of MSRP, so I will recommend aim for cars that is in the lower MSRP range. Most of the high LH score comes from a loaner car due to rebate and reduction in MSRP that dealers usually give for loaner car so if that is okay with you search for loaner car. Then go check manufacturer what the current rebate is like Costco executives program, conquest, GM credit card, student etc, this typically will already get you to a “good” LH score before negotiating on the sale price or just on the lease payment/OnePay. Then you just search out to multiple dealer with the deal you have in mind and see which one take your offer and you beat the game, good luck! (You can see the deal I recently get on OPTIQ follow basically those steps, I do need an SUV though so I only look for SUV EVs)
Wait until you are closer to actually getting a car?
Things may change a lot in 1–2 yrs. Things may change a lot btw 1 yr from now and 2 yrs from now. Maybe drop by LH every once in awhile to see what the trends are and then, when you are ready to get a car relatively soon, drop in more freq to narrow down your choices.
I didn’t want to quote each instance individually, but I seemed to get several variations of above. If you or one of the others could clarify, that would be helpful.
As I understand it LH score is basically a way to compare the amount you are paying to the total price of the car. Of course, I understand that if someone gets a 12 for Car X, it doesn’t mean that 12 is just as good for Car Y. It may be even better or it may be impossible.
However, if we look at the big picture, I think people who sign deals with scores of 20 are generally getting better deals than 15s who are generally getting better deals than 10s. Of course, exceptions abound. However, in my case I’m not that concerned about the car itself, so think that focusing on LH score is reasonable for my goals (I actually don’t think in terms of LH score, I think in terms of %MSRP per year, but it’s effectively the same thing, if I understand it correctly).
If not LH score, than how should I should I determine if something is a good deal or not?
LOL. It’s funny that you say this, because when I first joined, I came in with the exact opposite mindset. I wanted to do a custom build and get a good lease deal on that. Everyone piled on me and explained that those goals were at odds with each other. And after spending some time on here, I realized that if the price is right, I’m actually OK with any car.
The reason I cared about a car is because I thought, “Well if I spend that much and I’m going to drive it into the ground I need to find something perfect.” But after spending some time around here, I’ve realized that there is another way. If I can get an insane deal with only a 2-3 yr commitment, then the car is not as important. All luxury EVs are nice enough for me.
Yeah, I get that. I’m more interested in general skills. For example, if you asked me to find what the best luxury EVs to lease right now are, I don’t know and it would take me a good bit of research to figure out how to know (which is what I’m doing now).
I know you didn’t say that you weren’t that concerned about the car at all, but the $60K-120K is such a wide but arbitrary range and yet also implies that there’s something about the car (or usual features/fit and finish w/i a class) itself that matters to you.
Does the LH score factor into 90% of your decision making and the intangible 10%? Or 75/25?
The intangible are not 0% b/c you presumably wouldn’t have specified an MSRP range, if that were the case.
As others have said, current programs will be irrelevant 2 years from now, but make sure you take the time during those next couple years to master leases so you are ready.
It’s kind of a gestalt thing. I think an EQB is about the cheapest car that I feel like I’d be happy with (and it’s not even a sedan, which is what I prefer, but I’m good with it). Once the price goes over 120K, it just feels like too much to spend on a car.
That probably seems a bit odd, but that is how I arrived at my range.
That’s the plan. Until my most recent ride, I always bought and I was confident that I was very good at negotiating those deals. Unfortunately applying those skills to leasing isn’t as easy as I had hoped. The range of lease deals to be had is far wider than the range of purchase deals.
One problem I anticipate with this approach is that I’m in WA and there don’t seem to be a lot of brokers for that area. So, you have to look into shipping the car which adds cost and complexity.
So is two months before current lease ends generally considered the right time to start? Seems a bit rushed to me as a former buyer. I never faced any significant time pressure when it came to buying a car. Obviously with leasing you can easily be too early or too late.
