Mazda5 Lease Questions
CarMan@Edmunds
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in Mazda
Hi everyone. Please use the following discussion to post any questions that you have about leasing a Mazda5. Thanks.
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If you tell them right away that you lease, they will give you final pricing, they are more reluctant to give you the detail as of amount given for the exchange, price paid for new car, ...
The sales dept. will give you a nice (it's gonna be 450$/month, tax, exchange, Trans&Prep included).
I prefer to know how much i got for the exchange,then the price paid.
It's easier to negotiate with other dealers with those numbers.
then again, some will give you the details even if you tell them you'going to lease the car.
After a bit of research and negotiating I settled on a deal with Leasecompare.com. They allow you to either locate the car you want and negotiate the purchase price or they'll find your car and purchase it, then lease it to you. They had trouble finding the one I wanted, so now that I have found it and got the price down a bit, they are working with the dealer on the purchase and with me on the lease deal. It turns out something like this...
I talked to my local dealer (Stokes Mazda, Charleston, SC, USA) and found an M5 Touring Carbon Gray, the only acc. = floormats Manual trans. US$18,800 + Tax/Title/Lic. OTD $US19,438
Now for the lease
At Leasecompare.com I input all the parameters and it returned 5 or 6 offers, of which I chose the my best set of parameters (lease term, miles/year, 0 to ?$ downpayment, money factor, etc) and chose the lease option.
I should be zooming next week
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In my mind, the first and foremost is the price of the car. Everything else is derived from the price because the monthly lease payment and the future residual value are all a factor of future value of the current purchase price.
Since I learnt finance, I am pretty familiar with a financial calculator. If you provide two out of the following three variables, the calculator can help you to find the last variable: Monthly Payment Amount, Future Residual Amount; &/or Interest(depreciation)%.
I have bought 4 vehicles in the last 10 years or so. Each time the dealers brought up the leasing option and I started punching in numbers to the calculator. They never told how much they were making on the interest(Depreciation) on a lease, so I would use the monthly payment and residual value and back tracked the interest they were making off of me. Usually, it would be 8-10% from my experience with the promoted leasing program. However, if there was no promoted leasing program, just a lease alternative that a dealer brought up so you might afford a car that you wouldn't be able to afford with a loan, then the interest on the lease would be much higher.
By the way, not only you need to negotiate on the purchase price of the car, you also should pay attention to the residual value of the car. If you want to get rid of the car at the end of the lease, you want the residual value to be high (so lower monthly payment). If you want to buy out the car at the end of the lease, you want to have a low residual value.
The reason I never be able to lease is because I found the interest on the lease is almost always higher than a loan (which is natural), but more importantly, I can't drive less than 1000 miles a month, which is the usual 12K miles a year maximum requirement (10.5K miles per year on the current Mazda5 lease program). Remember, in most cases, each extra mile over the maximum mileage requirement costs $0.15 when you return your car. So let say you need to drive 20K miles a year, at the end of the 3 yr lease, you will owe 60K-36K=24K @ $0.15/mile, that equals to owing $3,600 when you need to return the car. Let say you don't have $3,600.00 cash to pay just to return the car, that means you HAVE to buy the lease off. Imagine if you have a high residual value compared to the used car market at that point, you basically are forced to buy an expensive used car.
Personal experience, my co-worker leased 97 a civic LX and went over mileage. She doesn't have cash to pay the over mileage in order to return the car, so she got a 12% loan to finance her $15K residual value on a civic LX with a lot of mileage on it (more than used car market). She was totally screwed.
So basically, if you want to lease a car that is your second car, so you can keep the mileage low; and a car that have good resale value, which translate to higher residual value; and you are pretty certain that you will return the car at the end of the lease, then lease is for you.
If your car is your primary car, then you need to worry about the mileage. And if the car does not have a good residual value, you payment won't be too much lower than a loan payment. And if you want to keep the car at the end of the lease, you should just get a loan to finance car because the loan usually have lower interest rate even if it is a 60 month loan.
The reality is most people lease because the bottom line payments are usually less then financing. Short term benefit but long term bad idea. After your lease ends what do you have to show for it? For example if you bought a house and made payments towards it, your building equity towards your property. Whereas if you rent (and basically thats what leasing is a fancy word for renting) your monthly rent payments go towards the landlord who you are helping in building equity on his property. Or in this case the person leasing is helping the dealership build equity on their vehicle. Not a bad deal for the landlord or the dealership. That's why dealerships recommend and in alot of cases push leasing. Not because it's a good deal for you as they would like you to think.
A friend of mine leased a Jeep and another friend leased a Lexus IS300. Both say they would never lease again.
The dealership that I bought my Mazda 5 from told me alot of people go into the dealership saying here's what I can afford what can you get me into. Not here is what I want how much is it.
That's the dumbest argument I have ever heard when it comes to lease vs own. The important difference you missed is that real estate appreciates in the long term whereas new cars depreciate. Within the first few years, most people are upside down on their new car loans. If you think a car is a good investment, I sure hope you own some limited edition 1970s muscle car! I do agree with you that leasing should not be used by people to get nice cars they would not ordinarily be able to afford.
The bottom line is that leasing in good for some people, not good for others; good with some manufacturers, not good with others. It is important to do your homework before you settle on buying or leasing. Mazda does NOT have good lease deals right now. I looked at a 5 this week and negotiated a ~$360/mo lease with no CCR for a $26k MSRP vehicle. That's lousy. Instead, I picked up a Nissan Murano for $340/mo with no CCR for a $31k msrp vehicle. That, IMO, is a good deal. If you're looking to lease, find a Nissan, Honda or Toyota- all of which have some great programs on selected vehicles. If you have your heart set on a Mazda, buy it!
Below, I'm going to use a quote from www.comparelease.com (recommanded by a member from previous posts) to compare with a traditional loan. Hopefully the comparison can tell us (or me) which program is economically better. The purchase price on this example is before tax/title/license. A touring Mazda5 purchase price is $19,007. I assume $0 down payment and residual value is quoted at $9,365 and monthly lease payment is $370. A quick calculation with the financial caluclator shows that the lessor (bank) is making 8.66% annually off of this lease program. Clearly, 8.66% is higher than normal car loan rate with any decent credit. So Car Loan wins so far.
Let say your intention is to keep the car at the end of 36 months, it is hard to come up with $9,365 cash at the end of the program to buy out the lease. So most likely you need to borrow from a credit union and get a 24 month loan to finance the $9,365. Eloan.com shows a lease buy out finance program for 24-36month at 7.05%. The monthly payment for this buy out loan is $419.50 until the balance is paid off.
Let's compare, for a same purchase price, if you want a same $370 monthly loan payment, the finance interest rate with a long 60 month loan must be lower than 6.3% (which is obtainable as it is close to what I got on my fiance's car 6 months ago.)
What do all these mean? If the car buyer is looking to keep the vehicle for a long term. A lease and the subsequent buy-out finance cost $370x36 + $419.5x24 = a total cash out of $23,388; vs. a loan $370x60 = $22,200. Clearly, Car Loan wins here as well.
If the intention is to get rid of the car at the end of the lease, then your lease payments at the end of 36 months total $370x36 = $13,320. The benefit is that you don't need to deal with selling your car. All you need to do is to return it to the dealer; On the other hand, the loan payments at 36th month is the same $370x36 = $13,320, but there is a loan balance of about $8,330. If the lease residual value is a right indication of what your car is going to be worth, you can sell your car at $9,365 and pay off the $8,330 loan balance. $9,365-$8330 loan balance = cash back to your pocket $1,035. In this case, Car Loan still wins.
I don't know how much tax write off can benefit the prospect, but a traditional car consumer should not look into a lease to save money. A car loan is more beneficial in any aspect that I looked into.
If the above comparison is confusing to you, please ignore it. I just like to do analysis like this as a way to tell myself what's right for me and what's not. I don't mean to write a lecture for anyone. Writing the above is like I was thinking out-loud to myself.
What I'm saying is if your paying $500 a month for a car or a house atleast down the road you've got something to show for it.
Whereas if your leasing a vehicle or renting a house (depreciation/appreciation aside) what do you have to show for it?
I understand your rationale, but unfortunately, its incorrect. In a flat or depreciating real estate market, believe it or not in some cases it is actually more cost effective to rent than to buy! Like I said earlier- you have to take each choice on a case by case basis. Blanket statements like "buying is always more economical than leasing" is completely and utterly false. Whether you decide buy or lease a new car, its a losing proposition. The question is, which way do you lose the least? If you pay $25k for a car and after 3 years you have $15k in equity "to show" for it, you claim that is better than shelling out $275/mo over 3 years for the same car and having nothing to show at the end. Simple math tells us that we are in the exact same boat- $10k in the red.
Which brings us to the specifics at hand. Mr. Spyder has proven (with numbers!) that buying a 5 right now is more cost effective than leasing. Like I said in my previous post, I think anyone looking at a 5 right now should consider buying over leasing. There are some excellent lease deals out there right now, just not with Mazda.
I would like to ad my 2 cents.
I currently lease a vehicle that Im planning to return in 8 months from now.
I have leased the car for three years, and I have been trouble free for all this time.........and that for me is very important.
"having nothing to show for" is an old tradition and not completely true.
Lease could be good for everyone, for example I don't have a businees to write off any of the interest or cost.
However, this is what I see as the benefits:
* Want to keep the car for a long time, but don't know how good the car is going to be. If car = good keep, if not good = return.
* I pay for what I use. My payments are based on the portion that I use and that is true for the taxes as well.
Finally, when leasing you MUST know the final price of the car, otherwise the payments can be based on WHATEVER THEY WANT TO.
Also, do not let them change the amount that you decide and can afford to pay per month. People don't realize but an increase of $30-$50 dollars extra p/month is a big difference at the end. Try doing $50 x 36 or 48 and that's how much more profit they can make from someone that doesn't deal based on the final car price.
The dealer will always try to talk to you in monthly payments. Monthly payments that are affordable and people lose perception of the actual total cost. You will say "I can pay that".
you put 4,000 down and will pay about 290 per month for 36 months. That is = to $14,500. What is the buy back amount at the end? is it only $ 5 or $6K?
Im just thinking that you are paying a lot for the lease payments considering you put $4k down.
But my calculations are only based on what you have provided.
If you pay 290 x 36 = $14,500 + 9 = $23,500.
Is that the car's price today? - 23,500 or less?...then you will know if you are paying too much.
good luck
MSRP 18,935
24 months
12 k per year
lease end value 12,118
initial cap cost 17,900
bank fee 595
down payment 2000
mo. payment 270.00
This is thru mazda lease program. What say you, good deal or bad? Thanks, Casey
I have never leased but when I did look into it, the dealer said the only way to lower the residual was to 'buy more KM's for the car'. I guess this would theoretically increase the KM number at the end of the lease, thereby depreciating the car more.
For an extra $100 a month, you can probably finance the car and own it after the lease/finance term. That is what I did. I keep my cars for a long time.
John
John
Also, watch the residual value - it should not change during the negotiation. This is set by Mazda, not the dealer. I don't know about Mazda's USA website, but the Mazda.ca shows you what the residual is. Lastly, if you have a trade-in, wait to the last minute to factor this into the deal. Get the best price - layout the monthly payments - then factor-in the trade-in. And know what your trade-in is worth before you go do the deal so you can be assured you are getting a fair value offered to you for it. The best thing you can do is educate yourself before going to write the deal. Know your numbers and ask questions if you are not sure where their figures are coming from. You are in control, not them. I did my whole deal via email before stepping into the dealer. Had my numbers down pat in my head and walked in with a paper laying out the deal I wanted and asked if they could do it. If the dealer won't work with you over email - find another that will! Good Luck
I did this on my Mazda 5 - bought 10 @ $400 each and got the rate lower 1.5%. Lowered my month payment by $27! Sure, if I would have put the $4000 down as a down-payment, it would have lowered the monthly payment a lot more (like $120 a month) but I would had to spend $4000 to save $4320 over the 36 months - netting my only a $320 savings! The other way I am saving $972 (27x36) at no cost to me! Keep in mind that these is based on Canadian dollars.
Cheers
until the last payment is made, you own nothing. lease or purchase. the bank or financing company owns it.
every lease has a payoff - just like a purchase. If i wanted - i could buy my leased vehicle just like i could buy my purchased vehicle.
not all leases are alike
i have leased vehicles and though i dont 'own' them, i always have a car that is covered under a warranty. i also get the latest and greatest every couple of years. (this does not apply to the longer term leases obviously)
mazda isnt like honda/toyota in that they dont subsidize their leases to the point where the lease rates/money factors (think APR) are low. Honda would rather get a bunch of accords on the road for $200/mo to be able to say they sold more than ford/toyota and everyone else.
a mazda tends to depreciate more than other cars in their class (like a honda/toyota). though i love my protege5, a comperable civic will likely be worth more. this has an effect on the residual value. though i think this is a great car, with a residual of ~9k - or about 50% of the selling price - many people buying would have paid this much off in that period of time to compensate for the losses.
the last thing i liked about leasing was that as the car my wife would be driving, and not knowing the family situation in coming years, she was easily (and quite cheaply) able to move from a civic to an accord to another accord with very minimal money out of pocket (maybe 2k) and payments no more than 225/month. pretty darn good if you ask me.
leases are great for people who take care of their cars - like to get a new and/or different car every couple of years - people that generally drive <15k miles/yr - those that are shopping payment and may not have a decent downpayment.
leases are not great for people like me who can put 25k miles/yr on a car - even though my pr5 doesnt at all look like it has over 111k miles on it.
I think it's similar to renting an apartment. When signing a lease, would you give the leasing manager extra money on top of the security deposit, just to lower your rent? Probably not. If the rent is too high, I believe most people (myself included, as a renter, and a vehicle lessee) will try to find a different place to live.
Similarly, if you must lease and the payments are too high, try to find a different vehicle.
Putting money down on a lease is like throwing it away. Why pay any more than you have to, for something you don't own? For lower payments? To those of you who say yes, I have a bridge to sell you.
The Mazda Club Chat is on tonight. The chat room opens at 8:45PM ET Hope to see YOU there! Check out the schedule
Price: $18,710
27mo
$2000 down
$294/mo
Included in their lease structure was the following:
$379 DOC Fee
$595 Acq Fee
$379 DMV Misc Fee
$36 Title Fee
$26 License Fee
$28 Elec Filing Fee
They claimed the Acq Fee was from Mazda and they couldn't do anything about it, as well as saying the DOC Fee was a dealer fee.
Seems like a lot of bogus fees when you consider that's 8% of the total value of the car!! They did offer to throw in leather interior (a $1300 value), but I'm still not sold on paying for a bunch of fees that are 100% margin.
Anyone have any advice or experience anything similar?
Would anyone care to share the current money factor and residuals for a Mazda 5 Grand Touring for 2/3yr 12/15K?
Thanks.
If they can't find a bank that is willing to lease you this car, you will have to either finance or pay cash for it. I believe that Mazda is currently offering 0% financing for 3 years on the '08 Mazda5.
Car_man
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Do you have the 2009 lease factors on this yet?
Price is $22,781.00
Southern Cali.
Looking for lease factors for 3 and 4 years.
Thanks,
DV8Tor
Thanks
DV8Tor
MAC or any other mfr financing's lease specials are typically only for the base model.
So to get a mfr lease on a car with leather & sunroof, you have to step up to a level where those features are pretty much standard, like Acura or BMW.
Otherwise, you'll be paying about the same for a $22k Mazda5 GT (if leased through a bank) as you will for a $35k BMW 328 (through BMW).
Please correct me if I'm way off...
You can always finance (not lease) a Mazda5 through Mazda Credit at 0% for 3 years if you want.
Car_man
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Sound reasonable, or should I push for better?
Do not lease unless you feel confident the car will look as good as it does on day one when you take delivery as it will when you turn it in. All the factors in the world will not make a difference.
The cost of the wheels is almost equal to 20% of the wholesale value of the vehicle. I ahve filed a complaint with the state attorney general.
Leased from Scott Mazda in Allentown, PA :lemon:
Thanks!
Here's the information that you're looking for. Mazda's November buy rate lease money factor and residual value for a 36 month lease of a 2010 Mazda5 Touring with 12,000 miles per year are .00192 and 46%, respectively.
Mazda is not offering lease support on 2009 models any longer.
Car_man
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Cheers!
Car_man
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I'm 33 months into the Mazda5 lease. Last week I bought a Toyota Prius (couldn't pass up the deal at $2500 off MSRP + 0% interest!). Traded in my Mazda 5 I thought all was fine.
Rewind just a tad. I got an offer for the Mazda from Carmax for even money. Carmax backed out when they heard it was a lease from Mazda American Credit. Carmax stated they got burned when they had a car for a YEAR because Mazda would not accept payment.
My dealer said they could handle it so I traded my Mazda5 in with them. Today I get a call from the Toyota dealer. Mazda won't let them payoff my car! My dealer stated that I will have to meet them at my Mazda dealer and they will supply CASH (Mazda won't take a check from the dealer) for me to buy my old Mazda5. I will then retrade in my Mazda5 for my Prius.
Has anyone heard of this before ? There were zero issues trading in my TSX lease. I (nor my Toyota dealer) have ever heard of these loopholes.
I had to return to my Toyota Dealer and resign paperwork reflecting the sales tax added on to the Mazda5 trade in.
I was then driven 20 miles to the Mazda dealer. A Toyota dealer rep drove me.
He had a cashiers check FROM ME to the Mazda dealer for the deal.
I then "bought" my Mazda from the dealer. The Mazda dealer said there are several customers and dealers who are surprised by the loopholes. I am glad this is done. If I lease another Mazda it will NOT be through Mazda American Credit.
Car_man
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I can work up a sample payment on the exact model that you are interested in if you provide me with its full MSRP and dealer invoice price. You can find this data over in the New Vehicle Pricing section of Edmunds.com.
Car_man
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Can you tell me the residual and the money factor for the Maza Miata MX5 Grand Touring and MX5 sport, Automatic transmission?
Also, do you know of any good deals for this car? Thank you for any help you can give me!
The numbers for an otherwise identical lease of a '12 MX5 Sport are .00151 and 53%.
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