Lease v buy..what's your take?
 

Looking for some advice from guys I know have a lot experience than me. In the market for an is200t. I'm still debating if I want to lease or buy. Lease would obviously be lower payments and no down payment vs buying where I have put a down payment and make higher monthly payments, but get to keep the car in the end. What were some of the factors that you guys thought of when leasing vs buying and when I negotiate a price, should I let the dealership know if I plan on buying or leasing?:uh:

lexus has really good lease numbers if your credit is good and you want to keep a low payment and at the end you can always finance again to own.

If you drive 100's of miles a week = buy. If you can keep it around 250miles a week, lease.

lease is the way to go on Lexus vehicles

what's missing here is how long the OP wants to keep the car. that info is critical when it comes to leasing vs buying dilemmas.

There is a lot of very good info here about leasing versus buying:

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/car...nd-buying.html

Thanks:thumbup:

Leasing is the way to go. I financed my is350 since I wanted to keep it long time. but I would have gotten the same deal with leasing. You can bring down the vehicle price for leasing as well. I recently lease a 2015 sienna se (msrp 38000) for 32000 purchasing price and all the payment ($360) goes towards the vehicle price. So at the end I would either finance the remainder or extend lease to continually paying the principle.

You just have much more choices with leasing. You can decide to keep the car, extend the leasing, or just trade it in. And you don't pay vehicle tax or interest for your lease.

When you decide to buy a car after you lease it do you have to pay sales tax?

you would only pay the tax for whatever is left that you finance.

Note that tax laws on leases vary by state. Here I have to pay sales tax on every lease payment, which adds 9.8% to each payment.

I believe in TX, on a lease, sales tax is on the entire sales price up front - hopefully you don't have to pay again on the residual value if you buy it out at lease end.

Lease to Own is an option... I say if you plan to fix up the car, try to own it when the lease contract is up.

IMO:


leasing is great if you don't drive a lot and you want a new car every couple of years + you are resigned to always have a car payment in your budget.




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Personally I buy, I don't like restrictions on mileage, even though I don't drive more than 10K a year, there are times when I take cross country trips which bump that up a lot. Plus I like to mod and modding a leased vehicle is not a smart idea.. I like my vehicle to suit me, so changes are going to happen.


I will typically keep a car for 6-8 years, but I chose to only finance for 3-4 years.


Normally what I do is finance for 3-4 years, then continue to bank the payment amount after the 3-4 year payments are done as savings for the down payment of the next vehicle, which then allows me to have a large enough down payment to once again finance for 3-4 years.




I've had a few people try and convince me that leasing is better since I am banking the payments anyway, but I personally don't want to come to the end of the lease and have no choice but to trade in or buy out.


buying out a lease IMO is silly, you lease for 3 years then buy out and have to finance for 5 years, so you are paying on the car for 8 years.. To me that is silly and frankly a waste of money.

Lots of good stuff in this thread guys. Thanks and I am considering everything being mentioned here... Looks like it comes down to preference. Where do I even begin to negotiate if I want to lease?