Good advice. Nice to hear. SoCal seems to be a competitive market, with dealers being able to favor volume (bonus) over top margins. Also, multiple sellers vs. one maybe two in the whole state, makes a difference.
Thanks for the good work man!
Would it be possible for you to expose a public API to your db? Or even an endpoint to get a dump of the data is nice also 
I think its a great idea, but not sure of the long-term feasibility of either no ads or w/o some sort of subscription service (none of which we would want).
Most people here would do the legwork to save a few bucks.
Public - certainly not now, it’s too unstable and often inaccurate, and there are potential business/legal/copyright side-effects, etc.
Yeeeah, monetizing it is something I think about a lot, cause I’m running out of money, and going back to a real job will certainly limit the amount of effort I can put into leasefindr.
I’m probably going to add a “donate” button in the next few days.
Any other suggestions?
Had a productive weekend - added Ohio
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Productive indeed! Looked at it briefly and shared with a couple friends looking for new cars. I’ll make sure to post any feedback I have or hear. Thanks!
How much different would your calculation model look for Illinois?
I don’t know at this point, but will prioritize adding Illinois in the near future
I think its a great idea. If it was useful, I’d be happy to donate
That’s a great resource, thank you!
It seems to be much more than just MF/RV database, with the fancy lease calculation And photos…
Maybe you can add defaults to relevant fields such as “0 down payment” to save users some time. Also, sort makers and states fields A-Z to facilitate easier searching within those fields.
Wow guys, all the responses really keep me motivated, thanks and keep it up, especially with suggestions about how to improve user experience! 
I’m working on addressing @Siejammy 's comment about more streamlined access to the data, planning to roll it out in the next couple of days. All other suggestions are on my todo list too.
Including this:
@kokajambo Happy to help. I’m a product manager for a big tech company - I’m trained and hired to design and improve web interfaces and think about users’ needs
I like where this is going!
Soooo, the way I understood your complaint, it wasn’t about it being absolutely impossible to get the data, but rather that it’s inconvenient and you have to click too many times and wait for too many page loads to get to it. I also looked at the usage stats and found a large bounce rate of users on both home and model pages, which often means they’re disgusted or confused.
Connected the dots, and thought I should make things a bit simpler.
However, putting everything on one page wouldn’t be good from the SEO point of view, and I would also like to add some ability to see and compare data for multiple trims, instead of one-by-one. So, I took a slightly different approach.
That’s what I ended up with:
- On the home page there is now a shortcut: you can choose model/brand/location and go directly to the mode’s page instead of filtering and scrolling. Here’s what it looks like:
https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/kokajambo/search.jpg
- On the model page there is now a table of trims with msrp, rv, mf, etc fields. When you select a trim, and calculator/incentives are updated. Screenshot:
https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/kokajambo/leasedeal.jpg
Does this looks closer to what you had in mind?
Bring more suggestions and concerns please
Also, for the brave ones who are going to view leasefindr on their phones - brace yourself, scrolling is coming. If you come up with a clever idea about how to squeeze the whole trims table into the tiny phone screen - please share.
@JJD might have something to suggest here…
Boom, much better! 20char
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You can split the model year and trims into 2 separate fields to make it shorter. It adds a step, but maybe if you add a default of the latest model year you have in the DB, you’ll save that step to most users.
E.g. a user selects Maker=Subaru and model=Forester in NorCal. The next page will show a drop down for model year with 2018 already selected, and below that another drop down menu populated with only 2018 trims. -
Within the same model year (e.g. BMW X5, you have only 2017 values), I think that your approach is good. It shows 5 trims nicely on an iPhone 7 screen.
Have you ever thought about listing the top few cars that are leasing at the best value? I classify value as the lowest monthly payment against the highest MSRP.
A few years ago the website RideWithG use to do that and was always a good gage of what a good deal vs. great/hacked deal was.
Yeah, on the main page they are sorted by: MSRP, divided by the effective monthly payment (monthly payment + down payment / duration).
It’s not explicitly stated, because I actually don’t think that it shows the best value. So far I haven’t came up with a better solution though…