Help with the sale price on a lease (Subaru Legacy)

davidw007

Hi everyone. I'm going for my first lease (2020 Subaru Legacy Sport or Limited in the Long Island, NY area) and to my understanding the Acquisition Fee, MSRP, Residual, and Money Factor (as well as the local tax rate and DMV fees obviously) are all set and non-negotiable. So as I understand it, the focus is really on reducing the actual sale price of the car (cap cost reduction).

My issue is there are very few 2020 Legacy Sport or Limited (non-turbo) cars at the dealer which are straight up the base MSRP. They either have additional packages or options (floor liners, splash guards, body molding, etc) which I don't want and make finding a fair sale price a bit harder. For example, $132 for All-Weather Floor Liners or $172 for Splash Guards are listed as MSRP but we know they don't cost that much. These are obviously high margin items which the dealer can claim add value to the car but is really just artificially increasing the MSRP which in turn artificially increases the sale price of the car (since they will say they can't sell a new $34,000 MSRP car for $30,000).

So I have 2 questions I was hoping for some guidance on:

1) Has anyone been successful in negotiating with the dealer to remove/take back some removable options (e.g. floor liners, splash guards, cargo net) from the car to lower the sale price/monthly payment? (individually the parts may not seem like much but on some cars which are "fully loaded", these options can add up to over $1,000 MSRP...which I believe itself is adding around $30/month to the monthly payment).

2) Generally speaking, in this case for a 2020 Legacy Sport or Limited with added packages/options, what do you all normally consider a fair deal in terms of the % off of the MSRP (or % above invoice price)? Should I be aiming for around 3-5% off MSRP/above invoice? Is 7-10% possible for a Legacy or too high?

Michaell

davidw007 said:

Hi everyone. I'm going for my first lease (2020 Subaru Legacy Sport or Limited in the Long Island, NY area) and to my understanding the Acquisition Fee, MSRP, Residual, and Money Factor (as well as the local tax rate and DMV fees obviously) are all set and non-negotiable. So as I understand it, the focus is really on reducing the actual sale price of the car (cap cost reduction).

My issue is there are very few 2020 Legacy Sport or Limited (non-turbo) cars at the dealer which are straight up the base MSRP. They either have additional packages or options (floor liners, splash guards, body molding, etc) which I don't want and make finding a fair sale price a bit harder. For example, $132 for All-Weather Floor Liners or $172 for Splash Guards are listed as MSRP but we know they don't cost that much. These are obviously high margin items which the dealer can claim add value to the car but is really just artificially increasing the MSRP which in turn artificially increases the sale price of the car (since they will say they can't sell a new $34,000 MSRP car for $30,000).

So I have 2 questions I was hoping for some guidance on:

1) Has anyone been successful in negotiating with the dealer to remove/take back some removable options (e.g. floor liners, splash guards, cargo net) from the car to lower the sale price/monthly payment? (individually the parts may not seem like much but on some cars which are "fully loaded", these options can add up to over $1,000 MSRP...which I believe itself is adding around $30/month to the monthly payment).

2) Generally speaking, in this case for a 2020 Legacy Sport or Limited with added packages/options, what do you all normally consider a fair deal in terms of the % off of the MSRP (or % above invoice price)? Should I be aiming for around 3-5% off MSRP/above invoice? Is 7-10% possible for a Legacy or too high?

1. Hopefully someone will chime in with an answer; but, you may want to re-post this into the main 2020 Legacy lease thread, here:
https://forums.edmunds.com/discussion/58020/subaru/legacy/2020-subaru-legacy-lease-deals-and-prices#latest

2. It may be too early for any good data, but pricing research can be done here:
https://www.edmunds.com/tmv.html