Time to hand down our 2017 Prius Prime Premium to our daughter. We are considering both the Camry Hybrid AWD and the 5th gen. Prius Prime XSE. The Camry is very nice, easier to find and I really like the drive platform. However the plug-in hybrid really works well with our lifestyle and the way we use our vehicle. The price of the Prime is hard to justify without a sizable tax credit. I have read what I can find regarding the tax credit available through leasing. I have never leased a vehicle and have some questions. I have seen different lease credit amounts - $7,500, $6,500 and $4,500. My understanding is that the lease company receives the credit and they determine how much they will credit against the cost of the vehicle. Does the leasing company receive the full $7,500? Professional price negotiators on Face Book say that I should be able to bargain for a 7-10% price reduction, others say $2,000 - $2,500. Is this realistic? My hope is to lease the car and then buy out the lease after one month. I know enough to make sure that the tax credit is applied as a capitalized cost reduction and that there is no penalty for terminating the lease early. I also know that there will be a lease acquisition fee, a lease termination fee and the cost of first monthly payment or interest (not sure). If I can find a Prime XSE with minimal add-ons, negotiate $2,000 off MSRP and realize maybe $4,000 from the tax credit, I think the price will make sense to me. If not, I’ll probably get the Camry XLE. The Face Book gurus say that they are getting over 10% discounts or at least $3,000 to $5,000. Before I go into a dealership, I’d like to be prepared and know the facts about the tax credit and the leasing process and costs. My guess is that the “money factor” should not be much of a concern if I pay the lease off after one month. I am concerned about the unknowns (what I don’t know that I don’t know). If you’ve been through this, I’d appreciate your thoughts.
A lot of people on Reddit did the immediate lease buyback after using the $4,500 lease cash. These days, you should be able to negotiate the price on any Prius/Prius Prime and get a dealer discount with the huge inventory surplus. The SE is hard to find, but especially the XSE Premium is greatly overstocked. So, about a $3,000 dealer discount below MSRP plus the $4,500 lease cash is reasonable on an XSE Premium.
IMHO, you shouldn't believe everything you read on Facebook. Really good deals (brags) are few and far between, in my experience. Offer to pay one of these Facebook people $100 to get you the same deal and get everything in writing. Let them put their money where their mouth is. Many times these are one-offs, lost leaders, or a family member works there and they utilized a special employee discount. Stealerships advertise these to get traffic through the door. If your looking for a dealership ready to make a deal on a car, find one that has a large inventory of the car you want. They would be more likely to deal, to reduce their inventory holding cost - but this is the worst time of the year to be doing this. Good Luck.
but this is the worst time of the year to be doing this.[/QUOTE] Biomed01, Thanks for the reply. Could you explain why you think this is the worst time of the year to purchase a vehicle?
If the dealership is buzzing with customers everywhere, looking for Black Friday deals. You better have excellent credit and plan on spending the entire day there; because pressing a hard deal (<$500 profit margin for the dealership, all in at their invoice price) is pretty much a non-starter. They'll just grab another sucker, sorry customer off the floor with bad credit and put them on a 10 year payment plan. Like catching fish at a trout farm. Your excellent credit is your bargaining chip, so the dealership can 'balance-out' the other 10 bad credit customers they just signed up. I've been in and out of dealerships in an hour and a half, when I was the only customer there. Of course I came in prepared and made sure the car I wanted was on the lot. I even got the dealership to give me a piece of their manufacturers hold-back on a few occasions. Additional discount manufacturers give dealership for moving their tin. Those people are professional car salesmen and have all the angles already gamed out. Do you really think you've got a chance, when you do this once in a decade? You can get a better deal, if you walk in prepared. Watch out for the finance guy's hard sell - I've caught them inserting $500 nonsense fees, reducing trade-in number, increasing sales prices, inserting useless extended warranties - easy to hide in the overall sales contract, where the only place they want you to look is at the monthly payments.
It is not for the Prius Prime. Currently, 2024 model Priuses and especially Prius Primes are incredibly overstocked. They are the most overstocked Toyota models. They are selling with deep dealer discounts. The most overstocked trim line is the XSE Premium. You should be able to get a $3,000–4,000 dealer discount on an XSE Premium in addition to the $4,500 lease cash. If you get the XSE Premium, you also get the PVM, which you will enjoy.
