I promise I searched! The only thing I've found is that the MINI's lease acquision fee is the same as BMW's, which is $725. Can anyone confirm whether or not that is correct? I'm going to my nearest dealership tomorrow and will either be placing an order or getting a car off the lot and will be leasing it. I already know the money factor, which they were going to mark up, and the residual values for the Hardtop S. I know their doc fee. What I'm not 100% sure of is the MINI acquisition fee and in my experience, dealers will often mark this up by $200.

Any help is appreciated!

 

Try calling MINI Financial Services:
1-866-646-4463

 

Awesome, thanks for the tip! I just found out that my dealership does mark up this fee from $725 to $925, so I'm waiting to see if they'll do the base fee.

 

Hrm, dead end. They said they are a post-purchase financing company and couldn't give me any information.

 

I was quoted the $725 if that's helpful. Also know that the dealer usually marks up the money factor - ask them what the buy rate is.

 

Yeah the base MF is 0.00145. Some dealerships mark that up to 0.00185, this one does 0.00165. Either way, I'm only doing the base MF. Still waiting to hear whether they will do the base acq fee. I refuse to overpay for these things.

 

You are chasing too many variables. On a lease, the dealer has the sale price of the car versus invoice and holdback plus any manufacturer to dealer incentives and any consumer incentives presently available. They have the money factor, the residual, the acquisition fee, and the return fee as variables.

The only true number you need to know can be condensed to cost per mile eligible to be driven. This is easily found by adding the money required upfront, the total monthly payments, and the return fee divided by the allowed miles of the lease. While the dealer can "adjust" any of the other numbers, that is a constant that will always be true and all the other numbers only a way to get there.

Your advantage is that today with the Internet, you can shop anywhere from your desk and pit multiple dealers against each other with your one important number. Dealers, and the people who work there, are competitive by nature. Instead of making it a competition between you and the dealer (who knows more answers) make it a contest between dealers competing between each other for your sale. They are going to make a profit and you should care less where that profit comes from. You are looking for the lowest total cost to you.

 

Regardless of how the dealers make their $$ and other factors aside, I would also make sure you're clear on getting the lowest sales price on the car. A lot of people get lost in the payment # but it's still important to negotiate selling price.

 

The lower the price, in theory, the lower the payment. But, if the money factor is raised and the fees increased, the payment goes back up.

I used to be the guy in the back office who calculated the deal and told the salesman what to tell you. If I could get the customer focused on just one ingredient of the total, price for example, I was going to win on a lease. The only thing I could not control was the other dealer's offer.

 

If you are bound and determined to lease its all about money due at signing, number of months, monthly payment and residual.

Find the exact same car and get the best deal from more than one MINI dealer as well as a leasing company like GE Captital. You are not buying the car, so selling price is irrelevant.

It's like like renting a house, it doesn't matter what the selling price may be.

 

I agree that the monthly payment is key. At the same time, as someone who has broken a lease early, I wish I had paid more attention to the selling price since you're payoff depends on it.

One thing I found useful, and it sounds like the OP already did this, was to know what the residual and MF are or the car and mileage you want. Those are pretty easily available now. If you know those, you can set up a calculator in excel and make some calculations easily at the dealership once you plug in your price. I created a spreadsheet in Numbers and have it on my iPhone, so it's easy for me to see the variables and understand if the dealers numbers are accurate.

Although, based on needing to get out if two leases recently, I decided NOT to lease my MINI, I was impressed with the financing process at the MINI dealer. The MA did everything at his computer and showed me what he was doing and then have me a printout. All the numbers matched and all the fees (a small doc fee) were reasonable. I had him run the lease numbers for me just out of curiously, and again, they were all straightforward and matched my calculations. I never met with the finance guy although u have not taken delivery yet. I'm sure ill sit through a sales pitch at that point, but to date I was impressed with the process. No haggling, nothing deceitful. And as I mentioned above, for the lease, he quoted the $725 acquisition fee.