With used vehicle prices hovering around record high levels for years now, most lessees have found themselves in a great spot, as they’re able to buy those vehicles at the end of the lease term and sell them for a profit. This also means that fewer and fewer people have been turning their vehicles in at the conclusion of a lease, going from 34 percent in Q2 2021 to just nine percent in Q2 2022. While speaking at the recent J.P. Morgan High Yield & Leveraged Finance Conference, Ford Credit CFO Eliane Okamura also revealed that Ford lease return rates remain well below pre-pandemic levels currently, too.
“So in Q4 we saw an increase of 18 percent return rate and that’s low compared to our historical levels,” Okamura said. “Historically on average we used to see around 70-70.5 percent on average return rate, so still low. I think customers will start to return those vehicles as the equity changes, but we still have strong equity values and as used vehicle prices reduce those equity values we will see normalized return rates like pre-pandemic levels.”
With new vehicle prices beginning to decline as inventory improves, it stands to reason that the used vehicle market will follow, which will inevitably help Ford lease return rates improve. After all, if a lessee doesn’t stand to make money by purchasing that vehicle at the end of the term, it isn’t as likely to happen.
In the meantime, owners of several different types of Ford vehicles stand to benefit financially from doing so, with two particular models – the 2019 Ford Fusion and 2020 Ford Mustang – proving to be some of the more profitable, according to recent studies.
We’ll have more on leasing trends soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for non-stop Ford news coverage.
Update: This article was updated to reflect the fact that it was Ford Credit CFO Eliane Okamura who spoke at the conference. Ford Authority regrets the error.
Comments
I have noticed that there are literally hundreds of Ford F150 Lightnings listed for sale on websites such as Autotrader.com and Carfax.com. Many have been listed for months and are dropping their prices. This is especially true for high end trucks such as the Platinum. An ad on Carfax had a 2022 Platinum that was listed for $136,113 on October 6, 2022 that has dropped to $88,997 as of this week. Looks like this could be a problem for Ford
Peole are buying vehicles off lease because Ford can’t seem to build any orders in less than 6-8 months , if at all. 3 months after the launch of the 2023 Escape and Corsair, not one retail order has been made.
I ordered one of each in September. They keep pushing back production dates after 6 months . If they delay again, I will definitely start looking at other brands , can’t wait a year for an order. Plus if they actually make my orders and they come in May, they are already almost a year old, so why would I buy them at that point?
As a recent Ford retiree, I have no faith in Ford at all. Guess it’s time to switch to another brand. Ford is only an F150 company, they keep deleting models and have little to offer most customers. No cars, only 2 smaller SUVs (Escape and Corsair) that will be dropped in a year or so .
Ford will die when they switch to expensive EVs that most people don’t want . But at least they embrace Wokeness . What a stupid , poorly run company . Looks like they will be pulling out of Europe soon too since their market share has dropped 50% the last few years.