I have a question. On my third lease now and have 6, 7 months left. In the past I would start looking and trade the vehicle in at 3 months prior to end of lease, starting a new lease on a new vehicle at the dealer. Since then I have found Lease Hackr and now doing all the prep work online through email, etc. prior to visiting the dealer. I have been working to bring down the MSRP without a discussion that I have a current lease coming to an end. My question is, when do I mention that I have lease ending for trade in? Before negotiating or after negotiating a low MSRP, MF, etc. My leases have always been under allowed mileage and immaculate condition for trade in value after leases remaining 3 month balance is paid off.
Always handle the trade and the new deal separately.
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If you’re essentially in the home stretch anyways, either wait it out till the 30-45 day mark and then get the ball rolling (since numbers may change monthly), or else check out Carvana/Vroom/CarMax/etc. for offers right now, as they’ve been quite active recently in snapping up vehicles.
In our case, Vroom had a competitive offer on my 430i that we took a few months ago, but they have been off by >20k on the 2 2019 SUVs we ran through it, so YMMV.
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Always separately, but do it in the beginning
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As long as you’re savvy enough to know how to separate the numbers in the deal then there’s no harm at all in mentioning the trade right up front.
The age old “don’t mention your trade until you’ve negotiated the new car price” internet advice stems from people that don’t have a clue what the numbers should be and walk into the dealership blind and uneducated, ripe for the dealer to take em’ for a ride.
As mentioned above, get an offer today from Carvana and Vroom, how does this compare with your current payoff and what the residual will be in 6 mos? What’s the make and model?
And the dealer isn’t running a charity, unless you’ve been in a position in the past to have a lot of positive equity with 3 mos. left (not very likely) the dealer is just rolling your remianing payments or negative equity into the new lease.
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Thank you everyone. Some great feedback and suggestions. Looking forward to the next lease now with all the great support and data compiled from this site and Hackrs!
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Thank you j_e_f_f