What is Your Leaf Lease Residual?

I am considering leasing a 2015 Leaf. The Dealer has told me Nissan has set the residual and he can not go higher than 30%.

The Dealer said in the past he has seen residuals as high as 60%, however he has no control over the number set by Nisssan. He said the low residuals are due to the steep depreciation of the vehicle.

I am curious to know what residual percentage people have gotten on their Leaf and the date of their purchase. Thanks in advance for any assistance!

My residual was set at about $22k in 2013. My monthly payment was $149 for the 2 year term of the lease, and has been $159 with added sales tax since that was extended. The residual is now at about $19k, before any discounting. Nissan really did get burned by setting the residuals that high, by ending up with cars that got turned in at very high rates (few bought them off-lease) and then sold for roughly half the residuals at auction. Lessees got cars that were cheap to lease but too expensive to buy when they ended. Nissan could set them at about $14-15k after three years, but they are now playing it safe. The only upside here is that if you lease a Leaf now and love it, you can actually buy it when the lease ends.

It's going to depend on when, what Nissan/NMAC sets (I'm reasonably sure he's right on that), the trim level, year of car and lease terms (# of months and miles allowed).

For me, when I leased in end of July 2013, when I missed some REALLY great deals that ended maybe a few weeks or a month or two earlier, here were my numbers on a 2013 SV with both QC + LED and premium packages.

Gross capitalized cost: $32,081
Capitalized cost reduction: - $6,522.32
Adjusted capitalized cost: $25,558.68
Residual: $20,601.60

The residual was nutty as I knew there's NO way it'd be worth that much at the end of my 2 year/24K mile total lease but that helped make the lease cheap for me.

Details that followed at lease end at the below:
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=449696#p449696
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=446797#p446797
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=449716#p449716

I leased a 2015 SV in August and my residual is mid 10K on a three year lease.

These great lease deals on 2013s were all based on residual values that never came to be and Nissan has learned their lesson (unfortunately for new lessors).

Leased my 2012 in January 2013 and the residual was $16,800 or so. Last summer I did get an offer by NMAC to reduce that price by $5k if I bought the car from them.

Want to talk about getting burned on residuals? My 2012 i-MiEV was acquired on the $0 down and $69/month lease deal for two years. The residual was $24K. That model car was being sold at auction at the end of my lease for around $8K! Ouch!

Thanks everyone for your replies!

aarond12 said:

Want to talk about getting burned on residuals? My 2012 i-MiEV was acquired on the $0 down and $69/month lease deal for two years. The residual was $24K. That model car was being sold at auction at the end of my lease for around $8K! Ouch!

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The "moral" of this is, IMO, that if you want to lease, you should either lease a car you may well want to buy, with the options you want, or if you are looking for the best deal, try to lease a car that isn't selling, like a 2015 Leaf S (in warm climates only!) or Base SV. Or, to put it another way, get either a good deal or a well-equipped Leaf you will want to buy, because you aren't going to get both on the 2016 leaf - at least not before Summer.

2015 Leaf S w/ QC - $10,281 residual.

3 Year Lease - 12k miles/year.

2015 S with QC
Leased 12/20/14
Residual = $12,500

The residual on my five year old 2011 SL-E with 70K miles, which will be turned in in 5 weeks, is a ridiculous 12K... I never intended to purchase it, so that is fine with me! But I did enjoy the $249 payment with 15K miles a year and $499 down...

Our 2013SV + QC is on a 2yr lease with an extension. The original residual was $20,600. Amazing as that is, I'm even more amazed that our residual, extending a 3rd year and beyond warranty barely drops at all to around $19,600. But they'll offer a $5,000 discount (was $6500 over last summer).

That is insanely high residual but I guess is what allowed us a $205/mo and $205 at signing lease.

Bufordleaf said:

2015 S with QC
Leased 12/20/14
Residual = $12,500

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LeafMuranoDriver said:

2015 Leaf S - $10,281 residual.

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These numbers aren't that meaningful without also knowing the lease length and # miles allowed in total.

dm33 said:

Our 2013SV + QC is on a 2yr lease with an extension. The original residual was $20,600. Amazing as that is, I'm even more amazed that our residual, extending a 3rd year and beyond warranty barely drops at all to around $19,600. But they'll offer a $5,000 discount (was $6500 over last summer).

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Both those residuals are hilarious.

High residuals aren't always bad. If you want to just lease a car for a low payment, and move on to another car in several years, a high residual can help you. I'm a little ambivalent about my similarly high residual, but if it were lower I wouldn't have gotten a $149 a month lease, and would be more pressured to buy the car to do well overall financially. The latter is what faces people leasing a 2016 Leaf.

LeftieBiker said:

High residuals aren't always bad. If you want to just lease a car for a low payment, and move on to another car in several years, a high residual can help you. I'm a little ambivalent about my similarly high residual, but if it were lower I wouldn't have gotten a $149 a month lease, and would be more pressured to buy the car to do well overall financially. The latter is what faces people leasing a 2016 Leaf.

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I have to say, I've been pretty dumbfounded by the grumbling over high residual prices, too. It's pretty clear I don't understand financial matters very well, I guess. If NMAC wants to claim that the residual value of an item at the end of a lease is some fraction "f" of its original value, doesn't that mean it will then set the lease payments so as to recover (1.0 - f) of the value, plus interest and incidentals, over the term of the lease? If NMAC deludes itself enough to rely on LEAFs to retain 70% of their value at the end of a lease, when they in fact only retain 20%, doesn't that mean it will fail to recover the purchase cost of each LEAF it leases? Sounds like this must be one of those "Yeah, we loose six thousand dollars on every unit we sell, but we make it up in volume" kind of high-finance deals I'm never going to understand.

You've got it right. The thing is, no one really wants to lease a Leaf for more than you'd pay for a Lexus. Right now, conditions are best to buy a Leaf, not lease one, although a couple of the deals mentioned here haven't been bad, so that seems to be changing, again.

2015 S with QC leased 12/20/2014
36 month lease includes 12k miles / year
Residual = $12,500

Levenkay said:

It's pretty clear I don't understand financial matters very well, I guess. If NMAC wants to claim that the residual value of an item at the end of a lease is some fraction "f" of its original value, doesn't that mean it will then set the lease payments so as to recover (1.0 - f) of the value, plus interest and incidentals, over the term of the lease? If NMAC deludes itself enough to rely on LEAFs to retain 70% of their value at the end of a lease, when they in fact only retain 20%, doesn't that mean it will fail to recover the purchase cost of each LEAF it leases? Sounds like this must be one of those "Yeah, we loose six thousand dollars on every unit we sell, but we make it up in volume" kind of high-finance deals I'm never going to understand.

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They also make it up in form of carbon credits which they can sell to other manufacturers. Plus there's the "green cred" which is hard to put a value on.

RonDawg said:

They also make it up in form of carbon credits which they can sell to other manufacturers. Plus there's the "green cred" which is hard to put a value on.

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Do you mean California ZEV credits (http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/zevcredits/2014zevcredits.htm)?