Quote:
Originally Posted by pheerlx
Excellent information thank you. I know leasing isn't for everyone and some feel vehemently against it for whatever reason but it gives you options like this. At the end of a lease you can return it and walk away, buy it from BMWFS, and now I learned you can buy it from any dealer for possibly less than the residual amount. Additionally if during your lease you need to get rid of it, there's lease assumption. When you buy/finance you have two options only: keep or sell.
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While I certainly dont want to get into the "lease vs buy" debate as that has been done to death, I agree that there is no "one" right answer because we are all different people.
(note: I have 2 leased 2016 MY BMWs, so obviously I am not against leasing).
Its actually easier to get out of a purchase than a lease (no worry about lease assumption, just sell).
Leases have the 925 lease acquisition fee up front and a 350 lease disposition fee at the end (thats waived if you get into a new BMW with BMW Financial Services).
Leasing does not avoid the depreciation hit from a new car (neither does a purchase of a new car)
Leases are ABSOLUTELY the best option if you are one who likes to drive a new car every 3-4 years.
Purchasing is ABSOLUTELY better if you can keep the car for 6+ years. Every year past roughly 6 tilts more in favor of purchasing rather than leasing, since at that point you have a paid off car you are not making payments on, and paying for maintenance / break fix.
"Most" People who purchase a car, start looking to replace it the second they pay it off (or before). Lease vs purchase doesnt really matter if you purchase and sell / trade the car in, every 4-5 years.
You DO get another "crack" at negotiating the price again if you lease if you want to keep it. The advice on not buying out a lease is because the residual is normally WAY out of whack with what the car is really worth.
On M3s right now, that may not be necessarily true... but on "regular" bmws like 328s and 335s, etc it absolutely is true that the residual is way out of whack with what the car is worth. A person leasing benefits from the abnormally high residual set by BMW FS during the lease, but it comes home to roost if one wants to BUY the lease out because of the inflated value of the residual. This is why if one wants to buy a lease out, they need to at least explore what a dealer (or multiple dealers) will sell you your car back for, because it could be less than the residual.
Again, on M3s I am not sure how much different... but on a loaded 328 or 335, the difference could be thousands (difference between the residual that BMW FS would want a check for, and what a dealer would sell that same car back to you for).
Its like shopping for a car all over again, because you absolutely do not have to do it with the dealer you bought the car from. The trick would be to sit down with a finance manager and convince them that "this is an easy transaction, I want to buy my car, you want to make a little money on it, lets do this right now
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Sometimes you can get a car CPOed (which has less value than it used to) and still pay a few thousand less than the residual. Again (I know I keep repeating myself but its important)... this is driven somewhat by real auction pricing, and what the cars are ACTUALLY worth, and while I dont have one, I hear that M3s are holding their value pretty well, so there may be less room there to "play" so to speak.