Originally Posted By: stevejones
As for the long term, just looked at the contract & the residual is $16.7K. If it performs well I may try to buy it two years - I really like this machine at this point. But I won't pay that for it - maybe $15K. I gotta believe there's wriggle-room when buying a lease - I'm sure they'd rather sell it to the current lessee than deal with putting it back on the market.
$135/month * 24 = $3,240...+ $16,700 = $19,940.
That's probably not a terrible price for a Malibu, which Chevrolet advertises as starting at $22,465.
You may be right about negotiation at the end. They probably know as well as you do that they won't get much more than $14-15k for it if they put it out to market, so if you showed up with that amount at lease-end, you may be able to score it.
In the end, if you buy it for $15,000 after leasing it for $3,240, you'll have $18,240 in a car that stickers for at least $4,000 higher than that.
Probably not a bad deal...