Hello, thank you for letting me join your forums. I am young and new to leasing, so please bare with me.
I have been looking at these lease deals in my area (Buffalo, NY) and today decided to try this Chevy dealer near me. I went in, explained what i was looking for; the lowest payment possible, didnt really care what vehicle it was. Long story short, without them running my credit, they gave me a ‘deal’ of $125 a month with $2300…down on a base model '17 Cruze with 12k a year (10k is not enough)… They are advertising this car for $99 a month, $0 down, 10k a year for 2 years. But with a current lease in the household, which i do not have. I am confident this is not very good deal…?
My real question is, if you take 2 cars:
Say a '17 Cruze and a '17 Mazda 3.
Both $20k sticker, both 10k a year for 2 years.
But with what i found was that Hondas, Mazdas, etc hold their value more, (so more residual value).
So say the Cruze has a value of $14k, Mazda having $17k after 2 years,
Why is it the deals on the Mazdas more? Usually starting around $150 a month, with $1k or so down. But Cruzes being ~$110, $0 down?
Any links or what not would be helpful. Thank you in advance!
-Dalton
It could be that they aren’t marking down the price from MSRP as much on the Mazda or the money factor (interest rate) is higher. You have to look at all the factors: MSRP, selling price, residual, money factor, fees, MSD’s, and any money you put down to reduce the cap cost.
Try to get all the numbers together and plug them into the lease calculator. Then you can manipulate them to get all the data you want.
1 Like
Will the dealer give me all that information or is that something i can find on here. I did see one just posted for Volkswagons but its scary to look at lol
They should give it to you, but sometimes it’s like pulling teeth. You can find the MSRP on the manufacturer website by building whatever model you like. The residual isn’t set by the dealer and doesn’t change, so that one should be easy. The money factor has a base rate that most dealers will try to mark up for profit. Dealership fees such as doc fees shouldn’t be hard to get from them. Tax, tags, title, etc. will depend on your state. MSD’s are just deposits equal to 1 month payment to buy down the money factor. You can put several down to get the lowest interest rate possible and they are refunded at the end of the lease. Ideally you should never put money down to reduce the price of the vehicle itself. You want to get as close to zero drive-off as possible.
This is a great place to start finding some of that information too. If you find something specific, just post the deal including as much information as you possibly can and someone should be able to steer you in the right direction. Good luck!
Don’t be in a hurry, read up as much as you can in this forum about specific brands which may be better deals (or read the front page where the “epic November” deals are posted) so you can get a feel. This is the first dealer you visited so at least you got that under your belt.
If you are young, your only negative is probably your credit rating (most of the deals here are on Tier 1 ~720++ credit score depending on the brand) for the MF. But otherwise, you should save money for MSDs but NOT a down payment (they both require money up front but MSDs you get back at the end and lower your interest rate)
If you want to just get in the ballpark, your monthly (including tax) for a normal 36/10k lease with $0 should be < 1% MSRP. For a 12k mile lease, you are looking at ~1% less on the residual. You can get way better deals but that is a starting point to see if you are far from a good deal or close enough to work with the dealer.
Familiarize yourself with what data you need to do the lease calculation by hand.
Dealers will normally just sell you the “monthly payment” but that is not the way to get a good deal. Also, any downpayment (avoid) you are putting down is really against your monthly. So if you put $2,300 down, that really means $64/mo more (so effective lease is $125 + $64 = $189/mo (without tax yet)
Thank you for all of the advise guys. I will find a few cars around my price range and research what would be a reasonable price for each.
A manager from the dealership i was at yesterday called me today and asked how my experience was. I told him that i was disappointed in the quote given to me, which ended up turning into an argument. The $2300 ‘money down’ he said was for taxes, acquisition fee of $595, dmv fees. I calculated the taxes to only be ~$200, and came up with a total of ~$1200. He would not tell me what the rest of the $1100 was for. Even after he said this was a ‘very aggressive’ price to me 3 separate times.
I could be missing something but i feel confident that i am not. This is a big dealership with multiple locations in my area… i cant see myself buying from them now.
