Infiniti Lease Specials Attracting Attention

Infiniti Lease Specials have been attracting attention on radio, television and internet ads for two reasons:

1. Infiniti has really been doing some heavy advertising
2. They do have some pretty good lease specials for January

Unfortunately, these Infiniti Lease Specials were not published in time to make our January Car Lease Deals for 2012.  It's just as well, Infiniti has kicked off the New Year with 10, really enticing Lease specials on 90% of their new lease models.

 
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Is the Highest Residual Value Lease the Better Option?

Is it better to get the highest residual value lease? Before we answer that question, it is important to know what residual values actually mean. The lease residual value is not always fixed when your car lease deal is calculated. In fact, the residual value is the one variable component of a lease that can most substantially affect the size of your monthly lease payment. Every year a financial company called, ALG or Black Book, publishes the residual values of all of available cars the cars on the market. This residual value is nothing more than an estimate of a car’s expected resale value as a percentage of MSRP. While these published residual values serve as a guideline for calculating lease payments, the actual leasing company can adjust this number up or down, depending on how aggressive or conservative they are about leasing a particular car. A leasing company might be willing to take a little extra risk on the value of a car late in the year where sales are exceeding expectations. In short, the published, 36, 48 and 60 month residual values of cars don’t always reflect the actual resale price. Cars that become extremely popular will often sell on the used market for a price that is much higher than their residual values. When a residual value is set too high, the leasing company absorbs the loss at the end of the lease term. A residual value that is set too low will yield an unattractive lease payment and be less attractive to potential car lessees. So, how does setting of the residual value end up affecting us when we lease cars? Because a higher residual value lowers our monthly car payment, it would seem that the higher the residual value the better. Not so fast:

 
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You know what's amazing? Hyundai, Subaru, Nissan and Mazda rated at the top of the ALG Residual Value Awards, yet none of their cars finished near the top in overall lease value ratings for the 2011 year. How can that be?  Well, as usual, I will give you my own two cents:  As I explained after writing this article, Residual Values are only a forecast and don't actually determine what a particular car's real market value on the street is going to be after 3, 4 or 10 years. These ALG Residual values are based on 2012 car models, so this is pure speculation. However, there is something to be said for speculation in this industry. ALG has a lot of weight when it comes to valuating cars, both psychologically and financially. Having a high ALG residual value is definitely a blessing for the car maker and for the consumer wishing to lease there cars. One can only wonder if these automobiles winning these ALG awards will now start rising in the monthly car lease deals we publish for 2012. When push comes to shove for 2011, however, the banks still bet heavily on the tried and true best valued cars like Honda.

 
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Exploring the Range Rover Lease vs Purchase

Why have Range Rover Lease deals been conspicuously absent from our monthly car lease ratings? Well, for lack of a better word, they haven't been very good. There is one possible explanation as to why a Range Rover does not lease well, but before we get to that, let's see what Land Rover has to offer in the way of leasing for the month of December
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