what is considered a good leasehackr score? If I get a deal that has a score of 8 years would that be a good score.
It doesn’t matter and is totally irrelevant. Get the best deal possible on the car you want. Don’t worry about scores and made up ‘rules’.
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I think he wants to be able to measure what a good deal is. And the score helps lots to do that.
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No it doesn’t. Some cars it’s impossible to get below 6 years on the calc. Other cars you’re getting totally hosed if you’re not above 10. What is a “good score” depends on rebates, residual, dealer discount, MF which are different for every vehicle. Do you really think that every vehicle should be at a certain lease hacker calculator score or a certain monthly payment percentage of MSRP? Regardless if incentive is $0 or $10k, or if residual is 35% or 65%, or if MF is .000001 or .01, or if a typical dealer discount is 5% like a hot new car or 25% like a BMW loaner?
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For the deals, that are posted here I think shooting for 10 years i a pretty good benchmark, but this is all very relative as each car is different. Its best to just decide on the car you like then work your hardest to get the best score you can.
It doesn’t tell you much, if anything. You can have 14 score with 3k due at signing and below 10 with 0 DAS, and anything else in between on the same deal.
Thanks for the info. I know each state and region is different, hard to gauge one area to another. Just looking at offers I have received so far which I think they are good. Had multiple dealers going back and forth, not doing any money down , made sure money factor was correct and residual. My score here was 8 years, another site that tells you if its a good deal or not I was at 112 which according to the calculations said it was a good deal
Unless there is a special circumstance (exotic, corvettes or other cars that don’t usually lease well) I tend to say a LH score range as the following:
14+ unicorn/Prime
12+ Great
10+ Good
8+ Average
Below 8 needs work or choose a different vehicle.
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This is all well and good. But here’s my issue with this methodology; OP seems to be interested in one specific vehicle, and the purpose of this site is to help him get the best deal possible on the vehicle that he wants. We don’t even know what he’s looking at so it’s impossible to say what a good “score” is, we have to look at each lease deal individually. It is totally unrealistic to achieve a unicorn deal on 98%+ of vehicles, and we shouldn’t blow smoke up people to create a false expectation that every vehicle can be leased for some magical ratio. The unicorn deals are fantastic and that’s one of the things I love about this site, but they require a lot of stars to align - the majority of which are out of the lessees hands. And they’ve been few and far between lately.
For example, I have done a lot of research and shopping with GM in the last few weeks, and I believe that right now there is not a single GM product that is possible to be leased at what you consider a ‘great deal’ due to incentives and residuals worse than in years past. Maybe a demo at 10k/yr, but when you consider the reduced mileage allowed it turns it into a worse deal than a new one. IMO you have to play the hand with the cards you have, instead of expecting a straight flush every round.
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And that’s the other side of the argument. Either way good info and perspective, thanks.
And see my post above. I can show you the same exact deal with a 14 score and 9.6 score depending on how you structure it. The same deal, different scores.
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That may be an issue with the calc. Essentially it should be based on total cost vs MSRP. You gamed the system lol
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With 0 das, a score higher than 15 is best
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Don’t forget to factor in the DAS into the monthly’s. This forum started out as 1% rule of thumb so
1%*12 = 12 therefore 100/12 = 8.33 is the absolute minimum to be acceptable. Over the years it may seem members have gotten better - a personal minimum for me is 10.1.
Thanks Alex. I just want to double check with you on something. When you say to factor in the DAS into the monthly payments, this makes sense to me. But what do you include in the DAS? Is this just only the down payment that you paid towards the total lease payment (as in to reduce the cap cost and in effect reduce the total monthly lease payment), or are you also including things like the acquisition fee, doc fee and tax on capitalized cost reduction. I guess I’m just not sure what is included in DAS. Thanks!