I am a complete noob with lease hacking, but doing my best to educate myself so I can help my wife get a good deal on her next lease. According to Edmunds, the MSRP is $44,495 and their suggested sales price is $42,037 for an XC40 T5 R-Design with a few options. I have read some posts where people say to shoot for 10%, or even 15%, off retail for the XC40. Is that actually a reasonable target, or wishful thinking? One dealer gave us an initial lease quote of $525/month with $0 DAS, 36 months/12K miles. I want to counter that, but I want to be realistic with my counter. Using the calculator, a 10% discount plus the current $2000 incentive would bring the monthly payment all the way down to $439 plus tax.
Also, is it reasonable to ask for a breakdown of that lease quote (sales price, incentives, etc) at this point of the process, or do dealers not typically do that until you’re ready to make the deal?
My biggest challenge with my first lease was figuring out how to do this correctly. I’m not saying you aren’t, but that’s the first skill I would recommend honing.
I would recommend knowing what constitutes a good value before doing any more shopping or requesting any more quotes. It’s extremely liberating to be able to act immediately when you’ve found (or arrived at) a great value.
I don’t know anything about your target vehicle, so I can’t comment on that.
Also look at XC40 deals posted and ask @Bostoncarconcierge if you are close to him. He just posted an XC40 loaner for much cheaper. Also @aronchi if geographically good.
Based on the research I’ve done, I feel I have a pretty good understanding of how to use the calculator. However, I was hoping to clarify some seemingly contradictory information I’ve read in applying the results from it. One source essentially said to use the sales price that Edmunds suggests, less any incentives, and don’t pay anything above that. But the suggested sales price from Edmunds is not much of a discount (only about 3% off MSRP), much less than what some on this forum recommend to aim for.
This is my biggest challenge right now. I was hoping that people on this forum could help me have realistic expectations for what is a good value. Like i said, some say aim for 10%-15% off MSRP, but then I’ve also heard that invoice price is typically about 7%-10% less than MSRP. If this is correct, I’m of impression that dealers aren’t likely to go below invoice unless they are really trying to move a car for a volume bonus. This is where some of my confusion comes in.
I know many people prefer to have specific numbers in mind and then reach out to dealers by email presenting that price. The reason why I was in contact with some dealers before doing that is because I did a search on the AAA website to see if I could get any deals as a member. That automatically sent my info to some local dealerships, who then reached out to me. I figured it didn’t hurt to get a quote just as starting point, since they offered.
I am not against using a broker, but I thought the purpose of this site is for people to also learn how to negotiate on their own behalf.
Edmunds is also showing me the invoice, and it’s only 6% less than MSRP. Given this, do you think it’s unreasonable to expect to get, say 10%-12%, off MSRP?
Ok. Thanks anyway. She really has her heart set on red, or at least white as the last resort. A local dealer said they can get the red, so at this point I want to figure out my best strategy for negotiating a good price.
She’d be interested in the white, but only if we exhaust all other options for a red. If you can check about the red that would be great. Also, Her current lease with Audi ends on May 13th so we are looking to do a deal sometime before that.
