…just talking about deal/value for investment, i.e. not considering `intangible’ value of something like leasing letting you trade up to new car every 2 years.
Tri-state and Socal post great lease deals all the time, most other areas of the country seem to get shafted.
Or have you had a different experience?
‘Value for investment’? Are we talking about cars here 
Show us some math so we can discuss. Otherwise this is just going to devolve into an endless pointless discussion.
I think it’s an interesting topic to see where you get the most bang for your buck. Some guy on here made a thread recently highlighting the hidden costs of leasing, I wonder how that’d seriously compare to buying used, or certified.
More the most part, you’re gonna find people pretty aggressively and blindly defending leasing on here, because that’s the nature of this forum.
I have a better version of this for you:
Unless you live in Tri-state or Socal, sometimes it’s better to pay for shipping.
I’ve reached out to several Tri-state and Socal brokers and/or dealers, usually get told that signing needs to be in person and/or they don’t do shipping.
To be fair, that guy made a thread where he came to the realization that when leasing, you have to pay for maintenance (be it up front or at the time of service), just like you would buying used or certified and that sometimes it’s more expensive to take your car to the dealer service department than a 3rd party. It’s not like he discovered some hidden lease expense.
Yes, some don’t want to deal with out of state deals. And some do.
Oh really? I thought he was the first person to ever publish this groundbreaking research. I was excited to see that mankind finally held the knowledge that maintenance on luxury cars is… expensive 
On a serious note, I don’t think it was a bad point to bring up or make note of, especially when people think “oh cool I can get a bummer for $300 a month”. I mean technically, but not really
He certainly presented it that way.
Food for thought article
As another aside, I feel like there were incredible lease deals in 2015/2016. People were getting Lexus, BMW’s, Infiniti’s for like $250 on an average deal. Interesting to see how the market has changed, probably echoing interest rates.
Strongly agree there, wish I could keep extending my lease from Dec 2015.
I own a 2005 Odyssey Touring RES that I bought for $2500 for the purposes of weekend jaunts with the kids and occasional daily driver duty. We’ve put about 15k miles on it, and maintenance/repair costs have been around $800 including me being OCD and having to fix everything that didn’t work or was worn. So if a tree fell on the van tomorrow and then it caught on fire (obviously it doesn’t have comprehensive!!!), the cost of it would be around $0.20/mile or $200/mo.
Does that mean that leasing is horrible because a new Ody Touring would be well over $500/mo?
Consider;
Does it matter that it’s 14 years old, and when it sits in the sun on a hot day it smells slightly like the old people who owned it previously? Thank goodness the windows roll down with the keyless entry…
Does it matter that I have a garage full of automotive tools and enoy having a ‘project’ car to fuss over when I have free time? And if I hadn’t, the bill from the dealership to do what I’ve done to it would’ve been $6000+? Timing belt/water pump, valve cover gaskets, spark plugs, two engine mounts, lower control arms, tie rods, both sliding door rollers, navigation system, several interior light bulbs etc. Also parts on this thing are dirt cheap and there are several Odysseys at the local pick-and-pull to get parts from.
Does it matter that we have 3 other vehicles in the household in case it won’t start in the morning? (that happened last February, starter went bad)
Does it matter that it’s not the latest and great model, doesn’t have CarPlay or a panoramic roof etc? Oh the horror.
Does it matter that in my opinion the interior materials and quality are far nicer than a $50k 2019 Odyssey Touring? But someone else might be of the opinion that the big touch screen in the 2019 Odyssey matters way more.
Again this thread is endless and pointless IMO unless we want to discuss one specific vehicle and look at leasing new vs buying new vs buying used based on a specific set of personal preferences.
For the family van I strongly prefer buying used. For my daily I strongly prefer buying new. For my finacee I strongly prefer leasing. Different rationale for all of them. No one size fits all.
Exactly, I was going to say that none of this exists in a vacuum. People have different needs, wants, and beyond that you’ll never know what you’ll get out of any car issues and maintenance-wise. I think it’s still an interesting thing to consider and think about. But there’s too many variables to make a meaningful discussion.
As the originator of the thread, my main hypothesis is more that leasing may still be a very strong option for specific areas of the country, but in much of the country it’s a much weaker value prop due to lack of deals.
The question you have to ask though is are the deals in those areas better due to lease only incentives by the manufacturers in those area, due to overall better incentives, or due to more aggressive dealers due to more competitive markets. Unless it is a lease only incentive in those markets, a higher lease cost would be countered by a higher purchase cost, meaning that yes, leasing is more expensive than other areas, but not compared to financing in the local market.
This sounds less like a discussion topic and more like frustration of not being able to hack a deal. OP, hire a broker!
This article is from April and half the assertions have been invalidated.
The average interest rate on new cars is above 6%, according to Edmunds. On used cars, the average is just below 9%.
Sigh… remember life before the yield curve showed us it’s double-jointed?
You can shop further from home than your skateboard will take you.
I found the deal on our car 400+ miles away in Northern Virginia.
20,000 AA miles per person and a ~$40 Uber ride got us to the dealer.
A batch of Marriott points put us at a nearby Westin overnight, and we had a pleasant drive back the next day.
What an incredibly thought provoking comment. A higher lease cost is more expensive than a lower lease cost. I never would have thought this. Thank you!