Probably not a guess. Car dealers aren't in the business of charity. Many people here drive out of town up to 8 hours to buy their Lexus. The dealership here doesn't deal. I personally would never do a fleece again. But, with that said, if the OP wants the car and wants the lease, then do some homework. Call other dealers in the surrounding states, depending on the threshold of pain for travel. See what the comparative rate is and go from there.

Good luck!

 

Dealers love leases because almost nobody will understand it and they can profit by that. The sales people at work would talk about this all the time. The less the customer understands the bigger the profit potential. This is how annuities are sold. Not that either are bad but the confusion just helps build the commission.

 

Leasing isn't necessarily bad.

You're only paying for the car's depreciation during ownership, that's it. Plus interest of course. This leaves the option of either walking away or buying it, although it is better to just buy it outright, but leasing it gives you that option at the end.

Where you might buy and resell after three years, you aren't guarenteed a "residual" price like you would on a lease. For example, if you lease and after three years it was pre-determined your car will be worth 55%, so on a $100,000 car, that's a guarenteed $55k you are more or less selling it for.

Had you purchased it and three year's later decide to sell it and can only get $50k, then you probably would have been better off leasing it. It's even worse if you financed/purchased it, assuming after three years your LTV might be even higher than $55k versus the actual resale value.

The important thing is money factor, or interest rate. You can determine the interest by multiplying the money factor by 2400. I think a good money factor with tier 1 credit is on the order of 2%.

You can also lower the money factor by what is called MSDs, or multiple security deposits, which are fully refundable. Say you put down five times the security deposit, that money factor will go down, a lot in fact depending on how much you can put down as a security deposit. This will effectively lower your payment, significantly in some cases. However, not all states allow this and this varies from brand to brand. Like BMW allows up to 7x security deposits. Not sure what Lexus offers, but you can ask.

 

Selling a car for a fair price is not "charity". Inflating the money factor to hide profit so you can offer a big, fake discount on the price and hiding that from the consumer is dishonest. Happens all the time, but its still dishonest.

Theres nothing wrong with leasing when you understand leasing, what terms you need to know, and how to calculate the payments. There are a LOT of opportunities for the dealer to screw you, but if you demand to know all the terms, you have confirmation what those terms should be, and you can calculate the lease yourself to check their math...they can't screw you.

Thats why we need to know the MSRP, the sales price, the money factor, the residual and whatever fees are being wrapped in before we can tell somebody if the lease is a good lease or not.

 

The dealerships will always have the edge whether you choose to buy, lease or rent. Dealerships are like magicians with all kinds of tricks up their sleeves.

 

If you have the data then they don't really have an edge...provided you're negotiating a deal that makes sense for your local market conditions.

 

You can do your research and negotiating but the dealership have the advantage. The data comes from the dealerships and many dealerships are owned by the same family. Many other factors are involved when it comes to leasing such as credit score, lease contract, term of the lease, employment, type of vehicle, base line or top line, mileage driven, damages to the vehicle, etc. Like R Z stated dealers aren't in the business of charity. Sometimes when leasing it hard for any of it to make sense.

 

Ive leased so many cars, it's not hard for me to keep it straight at all. It's like second nature.

The only advantage the dealer has with me is they have the car.