My computer program is built to calculate for a Pennsylvania lease. Other than Philly, all our counties are the same, and most of us are fine giving Philly to New Jersey if they’d let us vote. Not a political thing, just look how their sportsball fans are stereotyped =-D
Cash deals are easy at least, but finance is a challenge and leasing is a whole different world. Some states collect full sales tax up front, some do per payment, some have different rates for leases than purchases, and then all the different state fees too. While the company we pay gets us the figures, we have to enter them into our system in the right spot to make the payment quotes be accurate.
So I’m 60 miles or so from the closest border and even if you lived on the line there are dealers closer to you from there. If someone wants a lease from out of state I know one of two things. Either… I have a car that is hard to find, or they’re just shopping for the lowest price.
If they’re looking for the lowest price, which is far more common, then I know I have to be lower than everyone else between where I am and where they are, so it means I’m not going to be making any money. On top of that, I know I’m competing with bad dealers that are going to lie about the numbers to make it seem more impressive upfront and have to spend far more time than normal explaining everything out. On top of that, it simply is more work for out of state, and more important to make zero mistakes as getting signatures on a form that had a spelling wrong or something is a bigger challenge, so more stress for less money. I make enough that I can afford to remove stress like that for the loss of personal income, and it’s not all loss. Because it takes more time, giving it up means I can spend that time on less stressful local customers.
If I have a hard to find car (like I have two P* currently) well I’ll work for them because there is a good chance of getting the sale and it’s not going to be a giveaway. It’s still more work and not more profitable than it would be locally, but at least the juice is worth the squeeze as they say.
As for red states, I was able to get several “I don’t want no stinkin’ hybrid” red folks to buy a PHEV when it had a $7500 tax credit… because the only thing worse than the green agenda is paying taxes. Once that went away it’s a into the weeds experience to get the credit, hence this thread. So someone not overly interested, is going to instead just buy the gas one. So I can see some areas struggling. Also in my experience, Volvo is atrocious at understanding regional mixes. I think their allocation folks are generally somewhat new to the industry. They seem to do a poor job managing who wants and who gets what allocation. So if a dealer has a bunch of high costs PHEVs they’re paying interest on each month with no one interested in them, they are happy to lose a little money to stop paying interest.
I’m not sure a good consumer way to determine this, but cars built early in the year have more available profit for dealers. Volvo deeply cut into our front end profit, which while it sucks when selling at MSRP, does mean I think customers will see a little less room for games to be played on sale price and should lead to a long run benefit. That being said, it means that any early 2024s where a dealer wants to discount them, can be had for 2-3% less than a new one…. and that’s significant both in todays market, and more so for a lease. There is no MF or R-value difference for these cars. I’d guess the $3k discount is one of these, and then also where a dealer has been sitting on the car for awhile.