ja00386

MSRP 43498
36 month lease, 10k miles
494 a month, 4k down

danolo

Leasing is a personal decision(Clark Howard would be disappointed). Do you like having a new ride every 3 years? I have never been a fan of paying 50% of the value of a car just to give it back to the dealer. Is there an option to buy after your lease?
The up front amount seems standard for a lease.
The alternative of purchase may be steep for some( I pay 1200/mo with 36 month finance)

Good luck with this decision!

a310pilot

Did you work out a discount ? I got $4200 discount for 30 minutes of bargaining.

SW17LS

If you're going to lease you really need to understand leasing. Do some research, check out www.leaseguide.com.

I would ever put anything down on a lease. It's like renting an apartment, would you pay an amount upfront to reduce your rent payments?

You need to know what the money factor is, residual, and costs and fees rolled into the lease are, as well as a sale price that's as low as you can get it.

If you negotiate based on the payments, you're goingto get screwed. Sales price looks good, but they can easily make that up by inflating the money factor

ja00386

I understand what a lease is and have chosen to do a lease. The purpose of this post was to check if the price I negotiated was a good one. I definitely agree about putting money down, I can just have them roll that into the monthly price though.

SW17LS

See, we can't say if that is or is not a good lease unless we have the residual and the money factor.

Ask em to take out the down payment and give you all the figures, post them here and I'll tell you if it's a good lease or not.

VERY easy for them to hide profit in a lease. I've never been presented with lease figures that were right the first time. On the GS they were $100 a month high, after my price negotiation, and I had to re negotiate their inflated money factor and rolled in fees.

ja00386

Ok... here are all the numbers I have.

This is what I initially negotiated

MSRP: 43498
Dealer Discount: 3868
Sale Price: 39630

Lease Stuff...
Residual 26968.76
36 Months
494.08 per month
Customer Cash: 4,000
(Customer cash is broken down into 494.08 for advance payment, 191.05 for upfront charges, and 3314.87 total cap reduction giving 4k due on delivery)

SW17LS

You need to find out the money factor. Without the money factor its impossible to calculate the lease...it will be a decimal. I would ask to see the money factor on LFS's table for February (every dealer has a table with the residuals and the money factors for each month). They can and will inflate the money factor. When I was quoted my lease on the GS the initial lease figures were calculated with a .0020 money factor (4.8% interest), when the money factor for the luxury package GS retail from LFS was .0007 (1.68% interest). The dealer inflates that and makes back the profit you had negotiated down.

"Customer Cash" basically seems to be what this dealer is calling your out of pocket costs. Like I said before, I wouldn't make the cap reduction (thats lease speak for down payment).

The residual is 62% which sounds right. Are you sure you only need 10k miles?

ja00386

I only drive about 6-7k a year now so 10k seems reasonable. I am in no hurry to pull the trigger on anything so I can just wait them out to get the deal I want. I am going to go back in on monday and renegotiate / get prices with no down payment. Any idea what I should be shooting for? Just ballparking it from the numbers I do have it looks like I am at about 4.3% interest per year. (total lease cost = 44754, sale price = 39630, difference = 5124)

SW17LS

You need to ask them what the money factor is, and ask to see the release from Lexus showing what the base money factor is from LFS for the month of February. Calculating it is not that simple, its not like financing.

Residuals also typically go down as the model year goes on, so waiting them out when you're leasing may not work. In March the residuals and money factors could completely change, and they generally don't get better.

We need to know:

MSRP
Capitalized Cost (sales price)
Residual
Money Factor
Term
Fees(tags, acquisition fee, security deposit, doc fees etc)
Taxes (I believe in CA its a monthly use tax as opposed to a sales tax)

If we are missing even one piece of this data, we cannot determine if the lease is fair or if they are hiding profit.

According to my sources the base money factor for the ES in January was .00145, but it could be different for February.

SW17LS

As an example, when I put your deal into the lease calculator, with $3,314 down, nothing else rolled into the lease, and a money factor of .00145 I get a payment of $383.87 including CA 9.25% tax. So, something is missing.

ja00386

I am in Texas. Filling out the edmunds lease calculator with my info and a money factor of .0029 (filled in by edmunds as the alleged gold rate) I get 481 a month. There aren't any other fees listed, I am guessing they are just inflating the money factor a bit. I will check tomorrow what it actually is.

SW17LS

Please don't make assumptions. The dealer will absolutely rape you if you make assumptions.

In Texas you have to pay sales tax on the whole purchase price of the car when leasing. Do you have a trade? A trade will reduce the amount of sales price they need to charge you tax on.

There is no "gold rate" for a lease, manufacturers have different lease programs and the money factor has more to do with the car and the program than it does with you. .0029 is a TERRIBLE money factor, and that has a huge impact on the cost the lease, way moreso than the interest rate on a loan.

To turn a money factor into an interest rate multiply it by 2400. So .0029 is a 6.96% interest rate. Awful, and way more than LFS' rates.

So, you are going to have TX sales tax on the entire purchase price ($39,630) X 6.25%= $2,476.88. This will get rolled into the lease on top of the purchase price. Lexus also charges a $695 acquisition fee that gets rolled into the lease. Dealers always have a doc fee $200-$500.

If I run the lease based on:

MSRP: $43,498
Cap Cost: $39,630
Residual: 62%
Money Factor: .00145
Fees rolled in :$3,621.88 (taxes, $150 for tags, $695 acquisition, $300 doc fee)
Down Payment: $3,314.87
36 months

I get a payment of $457.24....still a little off.

Just to show you how important the money factor is, everything the same and a money factor of .0029 the payment goes up $100 a month to $554.25

if you're going to use a lease calculator, use this one:

http://www.leaseguide.com/calc.htm