Are New Vehicle Prices Dropping In The Duluth

Some people will argue that leasing a vehicle isn't always the smartest way to "own" a vehicle, but for me it's worked out pretty well. For me, it's a matter of not worrying about anything breaking and costing me more, plus with current interest rates, buying a new vehicle is a little crazy.

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I'm now on my third lease in a row, and actually wasn't going to lease my latest truck, but I received an offer I couldn't refuse.

My previous lease wasn't up until October, and with current truck values, I was planning on buying it out and keeping it, or turning around after and trading it in, or selling privately.

One of our local Ford dealers who I leased through reached out with a private cash lease buyout offer that was just shy of $6,000. Offers like that haven't been around for years, but my truck still had a lot of extra value. The dealership then offered me a too good to be true deal to sell them the truck vs giving it back through the lease program.

I went into the dealer skeptical, after being told my payment on a new truck, with a ton of features my current one didn't have, would be less than I was currently paying. So much less, it was really close to how much financing out and buying my current one would be.

Because of the incentives and the offer from my local dealer, the payment indeed was lower, and I jumped at the opportunity. Before doing so though, I double checked prices and interest rates on buying, and I couldn't beat the deal.

What's interesting is that was just last week, and I see in that short amount of time, lease incentives and interest rate offerings have already dropped. My brother got a call from another local dealer on Friday and was told they were dropping the price of the trucks he was looking at to MSRP. They were previously marked up almost $10,000.

Hopefully this is a sign that vehicle prices, and truck prices are going to swing down again after the massive markups during COVID, and the chip shortages.