Times Up – What do you do?

So for the past 2 or 3 years you have been spoiled a bit. When you got your last leased car you either caught the model changing, had a ridiculous amount of equity in your current car that I pulled out and applied to the car you’re driving now or the deal at the time had thousands in rebates… But now they want hundreds more per month to lease that car again. It’s a tough concept to grasp. Many of my Mercedes customers are dealing with this right now. The C300 and E350 are both pricing $60 – $150 more per month. The GL450 is $200 – $300 more per month and the S550 is $800 – $1,200 more per month.

So what do you do? You move on and I find you the next insane deal!

Last month I had 3 customers with leases expiring on the Mercedes E350. All of them were paying in the mid to high $400’s on their current car with hardly putting anything down. A new lease on the same car was over $600 per month. Two of them opted for a new BMW 5-series and one went into a Lexus GS350 for not much more than what they were paying on the Mercedes. There are definitely alternatives out there for people who want to stay in a luxury car without paying the luxury price.

MSRP and 5-Points

I’ve had lots of customer over the past 6 months to a year inquiring and eagerly awaiting the new Mercedes S550 and Range Rover. I advised most of them to order the vehicles on their own and use my Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Dealer Report® for accurate pricing when the car comes in. Especially for those people leasing! Whenever one of these new cars come out dealers are notorious for making up the lease factors and playing it off like they’re just charging MSRP.

I did a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Dealer Report® for a customer on a new Mercedes S550 4-matic recently. The car was ordered a few months ago and it was just about to come in. He received lease numbers from the dealership and they seemed much higher than he expected. My report showed a monthly payment that was over $200 per month cheaper than what he was told by the dealer with getting a small discount of $2,000 on the car. Had he paid MSRP it would still have been $150 per month difference. Over 36 months it’s a savings between $5,400 and $7,200.

The lease was over $2,300 per month and he asked my thoughts. First I must say the S550 is a really nice car but for the last 3-4 years I have gotten many of them for customers between $900 and $1,300 per month. It’s hard to say the new one is worth about $800+ more per month. So I recommended to either add $500 to your monthly payment and go get a Bentley or look at the Audi, BMW or Lexus. I know that if it were me, in 3-6 months once the novelty worn off I would be kicking myself about it. I also think in 6-9 months you’ll be able to get them for under $1,500 per month if not less.