Need some help again friends.

I am trying to find someone that sells cars for a living to get some advice but I don't know anyone who does.

I am currently in a situation with a car dealership and am trying to come out of it alive. LOL

They are now trying to talk me into leasing a car instead of buying. Since I do tend to put a lot of miles on a car I was worried about the overage charges.

The guy tells me that the only way a lease comes out good is if you purchase the car after the initial lease period. He is saying it will be a 39 month lease, which gives you payments that are a little less than if you were buying it. Then at the end of the lease you will pay market value (I think) for the car and finance it for 36 months and the payment will be "about" the same. My "about" and their "about" is that part that worries me.

Anyone have any experience or advice? I have never been too keen on the idea of leasing. Is that good or bad?

Thanks
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We have leased cars before and have both bought and walked away at the end. The time we bought the car at the end of the lease we did OK, but might have done better had we purchased the car up front. The catch is that with our cash flow, we could not do that, so it worked out OK for us -- allowing us to have a car at a reasonably monthly cost. We had planned to walk away at the end, but we really liked the car and the price was reasonable.

The time we really did walk away, we knew ahead of time that we were going to do that, so we were OK with how it all turned out.

The dealer is not going to lose money in any deal. In a purchase deal, you take out a loan, and the dealer gets paid. In a lease, an leasing agency takes out the loan, and the dealer gets paid. The dealer makes out OK either way. It's in the dealer's best interest to sell you a car regardless of how it's paid for. I think (but I am not sure) that the dealer makes out a little better with a lease.

In general, we prefer to own, but that is not always possible, or reasonable :-)
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I am a huge believer in Dave Ramsey. He says that you should NEVER lease a car.
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I think it all depends on your needs, at least that's my opinion. I know from a strictly numbers standpoint buying outright is probably the best, but when I was looking for a car 3.5 years ago, based on my situation, I wanted to spend $X a month to have a decent car and, more specifically, never need to worry about if the thing was going to start or if it would breakdown on a long drive. After checking with a few dealerships I found the perfect balance, paid an amount I was comfortable with, and after the best three years of the car were up I passed it off and got a new one with the best three years of this one ahead of me.

Don't know if that's really the most logical way to go about it, and I have had to deal with trying to explain this decision to many people who wanted my in depth analysis about why I leased instead of bought. When it comes down to it, I just say "I know what wanted, what I wanted to pay, and that is what I ended up with so I'm happy."

I also lease for 45k miles (15/yr), on my last lease I turned it in with 4k left to go despite trying my best to use them all, so I don't anticipate having mileage issues in the future. This is just my experience, I never intended on buying the car at the end of the lease so it's a little different than your situation, but it might provide a little info
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I've never leased, but I've watched people who have. Your fear about being over on your allotted mileage is real. One way to buffer that is to purchase the extra miles "up front", that is include them in the lease. It will increase your lease payment, but overage purchased up front is cheaper than overage assessed at the end. That being said, I have seen people who did and did not purchase extra miles go over and find out that their last payment is a couple thousand extra because of the mileage overage. That's when they offer to roll that into the purchase price so you can finance it along with the buyout. That's one of the ways they "encourage" you to buy the car at the end of the lease. Best option is to think real hard about your mileage, come up with a good estimate and then pad it. I have known people who parked their lease a couple months early to avoid the mileage charges. Best of luck to you, that's my $0.02

Wes
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My buddy owns a car dealership and I know the business pretty well. Don't do it. You only lease a car to walk away from it at the end. He's selling you a load of crap. Don't lease over 36 months as well. Put as little money down as possible if you lease. They got you by the balls while you are leasing, so think about what those next 3 years have in store for you. On top of that, you are paying the 3 biggest years of excise tax which may be a big deal.

As far as overage charge, you'll have to do the math. Whole point of the lease is you get walk away at the end and not have a car over your shoulders. Just move into the next one. If you get into a good program, some manufacturers will let you end the lease early and move into another new car with less fees than the first car.

What car are you looking to lease? With interest rates so low; a used 2015-2016 may be a better option if you drive a lot.
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I leased a car from a while back. Two things to consider:

1. NO MATTER WHAT, you have to pay the lease. While I never had a bad accident, I have been told stories from people about how the payout from the insurance company didn't come close to fulfilling the lease requirements.

2. The amount of miles per year is negotiable. I negotiated mine up by 3K per year. Hit the number almost on the nose when I turned it back in at the end.

If you can afford a buy, I would go that route for many reasons, but most probably the flexibility to pay it down early and save some dollars. If the dealership doesn't have a relationship with your bank, then go ask the bank about interest rates and also see if they have a buyers program.

Do not under any circumstances lease a car until you have had a private conversation with your insurance agent.

One last item: be sure that the lease spells out exactly how "book value" will be determined at the end of the lease. It used to be that they'd look around for the highest value even if that didn't match your car's condition.
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As some know I recently totaled my 4 month old leased car (well, the guy who hit me totaled it). There was a lot up in the air whether or not I had gap insurance (covering the difference between market value and payoff value), after many phone calls I learned that ALL leases from Nissan come with this included, it's not something that needs to be considered or paid for additionally. It sounds like a lot of car companies are doing this, probably to protect themselves from somebody totaling the car and not paying the full amount so they lose out or have to go to collections. In my case my insurance company will be (eventually) paying Nissan their fair value, Nissan will write off the rest, and I will be completely out of the lease.

Gap insurance is definitely something worth asking about when considering the lease, because I could have been out a few thousand dollars despite not being at fault in the accident. I didn't consider it when making the lease, so there were a few overly stressful days there while trying to get it figured out
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Thanks for all the input guys and definately there are some great points that have been brought out.

I talked to a friend of mine that has been in the car business for a long time and he basically said it's not a bad deal but........ He says in order to come out at the end of 39 months with the payment being the same then you would pretty much have to finance it for 48 more months. 48 and 39 makes it 87 months and if I were going to pay for a car that long I will just buy it and finance it for 84 months. Which I usually finance for 72.

As Ben says the deal they are trying to sell me on has the gap already built in. I do also drive a lot of miles and would probably put more than 15K miles a year on whatever I buy.

After reading all the replies here and talking to my friend, I aint going to do it.

Thanks:-)
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Based on my experience and the people I have spoken to, it's definitely a "if it works for you" type of situation. Not for everybody, possibly not for most people, but it's a good situation for me. Unless something crazy comes up, when my whole debacle gets cleared up in the next week or two, I intend on leasing another car
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And for me it just aint gonna work Ben. I didn't post the link to the other thread but this dealership already screwed me and they are "trying" to make it right. But every deal they have proposed so far is in my view screwing me again.
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It's all good brotha, I've been screwed over a few times recently in car-related issues and it's so incredibly frustrating, just learning what I can and passing it on to anybody who wants to listen :-)

Another unrelated word of advice to any potential leasers out there - If you pay for a maintenance plan that covers the full lease, make sure it covers all the miles on the lease and not just the time. Why they think that "full coverage" on a 45k lease lasts only 30k miles is beyond me, but something I will be checking ever time now
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Never leased, always bought. Maybe look at buying something that was just turned in after a lease? You would be surprised at the amount the value of a car/truck depreciates over just two to three years. Just a suggestion
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Don't finance a car over 60 months. You're nuts to finance a car 87 months; that's like a prison sentence.
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I've never leased, so my thoughts here are basically worthless...(not to mention most everywhere else, I suppose).....:-) But I never will, because I like to put serious miles when I want, and don't ever want to worry about it. My father leased a van a few years ago and anally logged every mile and calculated miles remaining weekly....would have driven me insane. I also 'abuse' my cars - smoke in them, and drive them hard in less than ideal conditions. I won't baby them, but I'm afraid I would if I knew I had to turn them over in a couple/few years.

This is the part that sends red lights flashing in my head. In my life, it has been a very rare occurrence when a company that I considered to have 'screwed me', ever made me feel whole again through their attempts to make it right. Lots that have gone above and beyond when there was a 'mistake' or unforeseen problem, but in those instances where I felt wronged, any make-up offer I accepted turned out to be (almost always) regrettable. Walk away and don't look back.
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I have been playing the game so far. I have driven 3 different cars and burned their gas in all of them. I just went back this morning and got my car back. Told the guy a lease wasn't an option and he says (now) that my friend was right and it just wouldn't be right for me to lease. I told him I talked to another friend of a friend and he is working on selling me a car (which is true) for about $330 to $340 a month exactly like the one I just drove. I also told him that if this guy comes through then I am done. They lied to me about a car I bought and then try to talk me into an inferior deal, and this guy gets me the deal I was asking for with the negative equity in the car I bought from you? Really? You are exactly right.
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If buying, work on the OTD price of car instead of focusing on the monthly payments. There's plenty of online payment calculators and try to find out what people are paying OTD on a similar car
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It's pretty simple. With my credit rating it's gonna be about $18 per month for every $1000 financed.
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This is true whether you buy or lease. The genesis is the OTD price.
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