Quote:
Originally Posted by CrownRoyal79
You're being way too general. You have to crunch the numbers for each deal individually.
In May, the M340i had a $3750 finance credit but only a $2000 lease credit. In my state, you pay taxes on the full price of the car whether you lease or purchase. After accounting for the $925 lease acquisition fee, the final price was $2675 cheaper if I financed instead of leasing. At that time, the special finance APR was actually lower than the equivalent APR of the lease money factor.
When using more realistic residual values (~80% of BMW's inflated residual numbers), I break even a little after 4 years. After 5 years I'm ahead by about $7,000 before subtracting any maintenance costs incurred between year 4 and 5. The longest I expect to keep the car is 5-6 years. I also like to customize the car and not have to worry about any end-of-lease fees.
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Totally understand I'm being general, which is why I gave a range of 6-8 years "depending on the car and numbers". There's always exceptions to this as well, and states which require tax payment up front and on the entire value of the car in a lease are exceptions. Just so happened the OP is in Illinois, which only applies taxes on the monthly payment of the lease.
Also, credits/interest rates change month to month, so I gave an example which assumed all things being equal. With finance credits being higher than lease credits at that time, I agree break-even does come quite a bit earlier at a little over 4 years.
Also in terms of customizing the car and what else, totally agree you have more flexibility with financing than within a lease. I was only looking at the financial piece of it.