What Is a Lease Acquisition Fee?

It helps to understand the details before you sign the deal on your new car.

Andy Stonehouse | 

Aug 4, 2023 | 3 min read

Ford

If you're excited by the potential savings and perpetual new-car smell offered by automotive leases, you may be perplexed by the additional acquisition fee required when you sign your final paperwork.

Acquisition fees are tacked on at the beginning of your lease, making them an additional cost you'll need to weigh in when trying to figure out your monthly payment. They start around several hundred dollars, but can go up to $1,000 or more.

What a Lease Acquisition Fee Covers

Acquisition fees are meant to help cover the costs of initiating a loan, which is why they may also be referred to as origination fees, administrative fees, or bank fees.

They include a dealer's finance office costs, such as a credit check, and confirming your insurance coverage and employment information. And they are separate from other costs including the down payment, security deposit, first month's payment, sales tax, and vehicle registration fees.

You'll have to consider whether it's better to pay the acquisition fee up front or roll it into the monthly cost of your lease. If you choose to pay this as a one-time fee, you might not get that money back if the car is in an accident or if you end your lease early. Rolling the fee into your monthly payment will increase the amount you pay for the vehicle, due to compound interest, but you likely won't be on the hook for the remaining fee amount.

The Cost of a Typical Lease Acquisition Fee

Lease acquisition fees depend on the make and model of the car. Expect to pay $645 through Ford Motor Credit, $650 for a Toyota Prius, and $695 for a Tesla or General Motors vehicles. Higher-priced luxury cars such as Porsches can charge as much as $1,095 for their lease fees.

As with other costs associated in a new vehicle transaction, there's a chance you'll be able to negotiate the acquisition fee or other equivalent charges before you sign.

The Details of an Acquisition Fee

When you're discussing the terms and cost of your lease with a salesperson or finance manager, go over every item together, including the acquisition fee, before you complete the deal.

A few automakers are more transparent about the specifics of a lease acquisition fee, going so far as to include it as a line item on their consumer website so you can see it as you put together your dream vehicle. Both Ford and Lincoln make that clear for potential lessees.

Other carmakers make you do some digging for acquisition fee details. In some instances, you might find the fee described in the advertising fine print detailing the amount you'll be required to sign when you lease the vehicle. Look for wording such as Toyota's "includes first monthly payment, cash out of pocket, and acquisition fee."

The dealer's website is a good place to find the amount of the lease acquisition fee included in the long list of details in fine print under the price.

Andy Stonehouse

Andy Stonehouse literally fell into the world of auto writing while working as a ski-town journalist, and has not looked back since. A childhood spent dealing with the eccentricities of a 1976 MG Midget has made any subsequent auto experience a more safe and reliable drive. He has been blessed with nearby mountain trails and snowy roads in Colorado to do TV-adventure-styled test drives on a weekly basis.