Lease on 3.0si? Is BMWUSA accurate?

[CkDedmon]

I'm looking at leasing a 3.0si with the following packages and options:

- Premium
- Sport
- Technology
- Cold Weather
- 3rd Row Seat

MSRP will end up being around $62,000. Assuming I can get about $4-5,000 of MSRP, the BMWUSA website shows a lease payment on the order of $800+/month (10,000 miles/36 months).

However, I'm seeing a lot of people talking about deals in the $600-700/month range for leases...of similar vehicles.

Should I expect to do better than that shown on the website? I'd like to get a good idea of what kind of monthly payment I should expect.

Thanks in advance!

[HUK]

I just leased a 35d. I ran a gazillion numbers for this and other cars at different MSRP. Since an X5 3.0 can be anywhere from 52k to mid 60s, clearly the payments can vary greatly. What I found to be an effective measure of "deal efficiency" is taking your total payments for 3 years (including drive-off) and divide by MSRP. If you get to 48-49% or less, consider it a good deal. With the current factory incentives, you should end up at less than 800/month w/tax and 2500 total drive-off for a 62k car.

[tcn2k]

For 62k MSRP, I highly doubt you can get a lease with zero down, zero due at signing for 600.00 bucks. At those criteria, you are looking at 700.00.

The 600.00 dollar you see, they must have had some type of due at signing or money down. Something you should never do on a lease. Never put money down on a lease vehicle. Do you put money down when you rent a car?

[ravenheart]

I fail to see how putting money down is a bad thing? I've known people to pay off their entire lease up front and basicly have no car payment - seems prudent to me. What matters in a lease is the numbers you get - how you pay it off should be entirely down to your personal preferences.

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by tcn2k

Never put money down on a lease vehicle.

Why not?

[HUK]

In the event of an accident resulting in a total loss, any and all payments on a lease would be lost. It's the vehicle that's insured, not the lease agreement. So since any down payment does typically not reduce the total cost of the lease, the risk of total loss suggests that you should minimize your down payment.

[Texas5]

A lot of folks apparently live by the "no money down" theory of leasing. While there is the issue that HUK describes above, that's certainly not the only relevant factor.

If your vehicle is totalled (a very rare event), your insurance should pay the full retail value of the vehicle at the time of loss. If, at the time of the accident, you're early in a lease and had put no money down, you'll be upside down on the lease (just as if you try to get out of a lease early). The only thing that saves you from owing that difference is GAP insurance that is often included as part of the lease program - GAP pays the shortfall between the lease balance and the insurance proceeds. I'm pretty sure that BMWFS includes GAP on all their leases.

If you make a significant down payment, you'll be foregoing the potential benefit of the "free" (not really free, it's build into the acquisition fee and interest charges) GAP coverage.

If you make little or no down payment, you'll pay more in interest charges related to the lease. Depending on the money factor (interest rate) of the lease vs. your other investment options, it may make sense to forego the GAP coverage and put more money down.

Since the real value of GAP coverage is likely to be very small relative to the other costs of leasing, you should focus more on the money factor when deciding how much money to put down. Low factor = less money down, and the converse.

[Thunder22]

putting money down on a lease is a big no no.

The main reason is that all you're doing is making extra payments!

Say you put down $5k and the monthly payment is $650, you've just paid an extra 8 months of payments! the offset in interest is trivial.

Don't do it. It's a waste of money.

[Thunder22]

Originally Posted by ravenheart

I fail to see how putting money down is a bad thing? I've known people to pay off their entire lease up front and basicly have no car payment - seems prudent to me. What matters in a lease is the numbers you get - how you pay it off should be entirely down to your personal preferences.

paying it off up front is another mistake.

If the total cost of the lease is $650x 36 months = $23,400. I'm POSITIVE that you can earn interest on that money over 3 years and not give it up front to BMWFS and not earn any interest.

Where are you getting leasing advice from? You're not getting good advice.

[tcn2k]

For RavenHeart and Penguin,
Why would anyone in their right mind put money down on a lease and dumb enough to pay a lease up front. If you are paying up front, considering just buying the vehicle.

Never give you hard earn money to anyone, especially if you lease. A lease is basically rental. Keep you hard earn money in the bank. Another scenrio is if you lose your job and can't make payment, they take the car back and you'll have a hard time getting your deposit back.

ECONOMIC 101 people!