If you look closely at your lease contract (or the research you’ve done on a lease) you’ll see a special line item called the “Acquisition Fee”. The Acquisition Fee is charged by the bank to cover the costs of initiating a lease, which is mainly clerical in nature.
The leasing company will make an Acquisition Fee available to the dealer with a little markup in most cases, so the $795 fee that you see on your leasing contract may only represent $395 of the cost applied from the bank, and $400 applied by the dealer as pure profit.
As you can imagine, the dealer is not going to discuss this fee with you at all, and he would prefer you didn’t bring it up. Not every bank allows for markup of an acquisition fee, but you can bet that your dealer is going to opt for the leasing company that does, regardless if it is the best option for you. You can protect yourself somewhat by asking to see what the bank’s acquisition fee is and what the markup on that fee is that is being charged. From there you have a leverage point to negotiate the final price of your lease downward a bit.
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