I find it super aggravating that when I decide to lease a car and start shopping it seems all of the lease specials advertised on my local dealers websites are just ghost cars. They’ll advertise a $579/mo special and 9 times out of 10 I follow the guidelines to a T and my payment comes back at $850. The 10th Time they just flat out admit that’s not an accurate advertisement(then why even put it on the page?). Is this a common thing nationwide or just Midwest where I am?(kansas). It just makes you want to give up trying.
That’s everywhere.
It’s usually on a base car and assumes all eligible rebates, a specific dealer contribution and involves some level of cap cost reduction before you add TTL and bank fee.
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Advertised specials are usually pretty mediocre deals… you just have to read the whole advertisement to see what the special really is.
Even bad deals can look amazing if you ignore $5-10k in taxes, fees, and cap cost reductions because you only looked at the monthly.
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To make things easier/more predictable for yourself I recommend the following basic steps:
- Decide on the car you want. Locate a model in a dealer’s inventory that you are interested in.
- Look up the car’s residual value and MF based on your preferred lease terms through Edmunds.
- Look up whether there are any rebates that you qualify for.
- Browse the forum and explore the deals other people got to gauge what % off you can get on the car (realistically).
- Use the Leasehackr calculator to put together the numbers and see where a “good” deal stands.
- Email/Phone dealers asking for numbers and suggest your number based on the research you have done.
These steps are not necessarily in order, but in general, make the dealer interaction smoother and easier for yourself (with less headache). Naturally this requires some homework and research.
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Click on Marketplace instead.
Just remember that taxes and fees are DAS typically; if you elect to roll them into the payment then obviously the monthly will go up.
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I have a question about manufacturer advertised deal and how that works with dealer’s own discount.
Example Kia Niro EV.
Ad from Kia’s website says $269/month (plus tax) with $4500 due at signing.
If a dealer was discounting same car on their lot by $4500, would that mean the lease can be had at $269/month?
Assuming the dealer discount is not including some mfg rebate and purely is a discount for few cars on their lot.
What am I missing?
Make sure you include all the fees included in the asterisk at the end.
Advertised specials usually assume some amount of dealer discount as well.
The best thing you can do with advertised specials is forget they exist. Put together a target deal and see what something actually should cost.
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. Offer shown based on $4,499 due at lease signing including $269 first monthly payment, $3,580 capitalized cost reduction, $650 acquisition fee, plus tax, title, license and registration fees, dealer conveyance fee, processing fee or optional service fee and any emission testing charge. No security deposit required.
So the advertised special is actually about $290/mo with $6500ish due at signing. How does that compare to deals from the market place here?
I think the most important thing to remember here is this:
A dealer is not going to pay to advertise a deal that makes them no money, or even loses them money.
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Great point. I’ve tried picking cars they aren’t advertising and then calling to see where it would be on a lease and everything is garbage. It seems being in the Midwest is really hurting as I’ve tried to get dealers here to equal leases on the coasts and they’re 3-400 higher PER MONTH on the same car/specs.
Stop calling them and asking how much they want you to pay.
Work out what the lease should cost based on the programs ad they apply to you and make the dealer an offer, but you have to work out your target deal first.
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Did you pick models and trims that actually have good lease programs?
Sounds like something to ding them on the survey… they are actually trying to make money instead of giving free cars like a Mirai.
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