Owners Choice with Flex down payment

[mcwinste]

New member here. My wife and I are putting a deposit down tonight on a solar orange Rex, 36 month owner's choice with flex. Question though: BMW's payment estimator defaults to $7,500 down, which I assumed meant they treat the advance on the federal credit as a down payment, rather than dividing it across all installment payments. The dealer calculates it by excluding the federal credit and simply dividing it by 36 across all payments. The result is that their numbers are $20 higher per month than if it were treated as a down payment.

I find nothing online or in the fine print defining this. How has this been treated in your deals?

Thanks for any insight.

 

[dlass0123]

email a few internet managers for a price quote: they are fast and see if they beat the offer; and
then buy from the first one if possible (they will lower the price)?
visit one or two more dealers

 

[tiburonh]

New member here. My wife and I are putting a deposit down tonight on a solar orange Rex, 36 month owner's choice with flex. Question though: BMW's payment estimator defaults to $7,500 down, which I assumed meant they treat the advance on the federal credit as a down payment, rather than dividing it across all installment payments. The dealer calculates it by excluding the federal credit and simply dividing it by 36 across all payments. The result is that their numbers are $20 higher per month than if it were treated as a down payment.

I find nothing online or in the fine print defining this. How has this been treated in your deals?

Thanks for any insight.

I did straight owners choice, not flex, so I can't say specifically how the $7,500 is supposed to be treated. But I can say that my dealer's finance person -- and from what I read on this forum and on the i3 Facebook group, actually MOST dealers' finance people are very confused about the owners choice program in general, so you should definitely check with a couple of other dealers to see how they are handling the flex program. And I wouldn't hesitate to ask your dealer to place a call to someone in authority at BMWNA Finance with you on the line to confirm that that dealer is indeed handling it correctly. (Until I educated him, my dealer's finance guy had no idea that in Owners Choice BMW was committing, just as in a lease, to take the car back from me at the end of the term -- he thought it only meant that I was committing to pay off my loan through a balloon payment at the end of the term.)

 

[flin5888]

BMW website's estimator is incorrect. The $7500 goes toward the residual value, not down payment.

Overall it still beats straight up lease. My purchase price of $41,190 equates to monthly payment of $393, which is about $50 less than lease. If you have more than $7500 tax liability you should definitely go with OC flex.