Fill in the calc after confirming Residual, MF and Incentives at edmunds.
Here is an example for $49,995 Mercedes assuming 56% residual, .00056 MF, $500 Lease Cash and no loyalty. If you get too much over 50k, its ‘agreed value’ might exceed 50k even after discount because you capitalize the drive-offs. And tax on a car over 50k is higher than on under 50k
You should be able to avoid that by paying some inceptions down.
General advise here is not to put money down to decrease the cap cost. You can still do some inceptions, it doesn’t count as money down. But I would assume this forum wouldn’t mind you paying $300 down if required do decrease cap cost to keep the lower sales tax bracket.
There are plenty of email templates on this forum, and you should be able to craft one, should be short and to the point, easily. Suggest your own price, including all details such as MSDs or no MSDs, incentives you know about (from Edmunds).
but before you do that, fill in the calc, look at the numbers, and contact @AutoCompanion or other brokers on the forum. they might land a much better deal for you. He has a bunch of c300 demo listed with good discount, new ones too. You can also get c43 for under $600
Programs may have changed from October. Find out what they are so you can negotiate with dealers. Or save yourself the time and reach out to @AutoCompanion. Even with shipping, it may still be worth it.
Thank you guys so much for your help! I think I might reach out to leasecompanion to see if he can get a car with the options that I’m looking for. You guys are so helpful!
Not on a MB, but my recent strategy of emailing dealers with the deal I want has not worked. Instead of starting low and going up, dealers are just passing on me.
The better approach would have been for me to go “top down” by asking dealers for their price then playing them off each other to drive the price down. This is in the SF area though where there is a lot of $ floating around so the tactics might work differently elsewhere.
How aggressive are you starting? There are some people that insist on making an unreasonably aggressive initial offer in hopes of going back and forth to a middle ground rather than just make an aggressive, but reasonable initial offer. When you start too aggressively, you’re far more likely to end up with your email in the trash rather than get a counter.
The other good way to get your email sent straight to the trash is to make an offer with incorrect numbers/calculations.
Then ask for 10-10.5% off. I just negotiated a lease on a 2020 M340i purely through email asking the internet sales manager of a local dealer for the upper limit (and not beyond) of what I was seeing on LH for that model of 10% off pre-incentive. Had a yes within 12 hours and an M340i delivered (free delivery included in deal) to my driveway a day later. I’m in the SF Bay Area.
People seem to have this idea that if they drastically overshoot their target, they’re going to go back and forth with the dealer and meet in the middle. Rarely does that ever happen. When you’re trying to walk up to the edge of what’s doable, overshooting just means falling off the cliff on the other side. That’s how you end up with your offer in the trash.
I ended up at like 10.5% but on a fresh start deal. The times I asked for 12% I went nowhere. I agree it’s best to go to the “edge” of reasonable, but hard to know what that is. I end up over the cliff and in the trash can because I overshoot not wanting to leave any money the table
Agreed. I think it helps having KBB/Edmunds TMV as reference points to gauge if the discount is realistic even before sending out an offer with a certain percent. Found this to be a thing on the Lexus LS, where only around 5-7% is the norm and 10% is “the best that they can do.”
Hi Jeremi, did you target a high volume dealership as I don’t think you can get near 10% off MSRP on a M340i form a small place. I noticed too that you get the best deals from either fleet or internet manager.
I`m reading the thread, and most common suggestion is to name your price after researching whats available. However how does that typically work for say deals like Volvo1? Let me preface the obvious that this was on a purchase.
2020 LS500
Market report from say CD pre-incentive: 8%
LH forum search is nonexistant on previous deals in the same timeframe
Actual Pre-incentive: 12.5%
Without shopping some dealers (possibly against each other), how would one know that their actually exists a 4.5% spread of whats advertised and what can be done?
It’s definitely more challenging when there is less data. One can make some guesstimates based in other vehicles in the same brand; typically the dealer payment structure doesn’t differ that wildly from model to model. Otherwise, you’re left with trying to cast a really wide net and understanding that some interactions are purely there to test the market. It’s also plenty reasonable to have a different strategy when shopping a different market situation. There’s not necessarily a 1 size fits all solution.
I just found this and would be happy to help, but be sure to use an @ before a username. Once you have some data, completed research on LS and its leasing programs, and have some responses from offers you sent to dealers, make a thread.
As @mllcb42 said there is an extremely amount of limited data on the LS 500 on the forum, which is why I wanted to contribute my data point even though it was a purchase. However, pre-incentive discounts for purchase/lease should not be extremely different. However, the incentives (more importantly the Lexus cash for the LS) is what matters. For me, it was either $5,000 total for lease and $9,000 total for purchase, to which I decided on the latter being that it was going to cost more to put 20,000 miles per year (with pre-paid miles at 0.20$ per mile and ~49% RV) then buy the car with more incentive and sell reasonablebased on trade-in values for older and higher-mileage models.
The being said, the discount I received was a combination of research and reasonable low-ball offers, which are not recommended if you want a bunch of phone calls and emails to lead to dead-ends (I mention reasonable offers because there is a fine line between a very good discount and wasting people’s time, ask @HondaSoCal). If you want to put in the work, most likely you will find a dealer that will get close. It took me taking the time to send 10 different quotes for different cars and slightly different MSRPs to dealers for them to essentially say “no, but if you find somebody else to do that we will match it” (not a tactic that I like to participate in being that one person put their best price and others just want to leech off somebody’s aggressive offer). Also, the dealer I purchased the vehicle from told me that they are not going to replicate that discount again on an LS.
Summary: It is doable, but requires reasonable low-ball offers and a lot of dead-end communication from dealers.
I’m pretty new to this site, but I’ve been doing my own independent number crunching recently in the hopes of getting a good lease on a custom 2021 330i this month (preferably before the end of the year). I’ve been reading a lot of posts today and trying to better understand the way many of you are able to get great lease deals on these vehicles.
I’m at the point where I’m ready to start contacting people, but I’m a little lost on who I should be contacting–especially since I’m looking into a custom car. I know the price of the custom as well as the price I’m willing to pay monthly and up front, but I am just trying to understand the best way to go about negotiating and contacting dealerships.
My first real question is: who do I contact? I like the idea of keeping it email-only until the deal is getting better. My second question would be: what are honestly the best things to say in an opening email? I’ve been reading posts but it seems like there’s many options and approaches.
Any help would be greatly appreciated and I’m looking to learn more about this process.
