Why High-Income Drivers Choose to Lease
There’s a common assumption that leasing is for people who can’t afford to buy. The data tells a different sto
In the third episode of Inside the Lease, Kelly Strausser, COO of D&M Leasing, and Chase Kennemer, President of D&M Leasing in Fort Worth, talk through why leasing often fits high-income drivers better than financing does, and the reasons have nothing to do with cash flow. The short version is that leasing matches financial exposure to how a vehicle is actually used, and that match matters more as the vehicle gets more expensive.
The first factor is the trade cycle. Higher-income drivers tend to trade vehicles more often than the average owner. Someone trading every two to three years is, by definition, a better fit for a lease than someone planning to drive a car for a decade. The shorter the timeframe, the more a lease structure aligns with how the vehicle is actually being used.
The second factor is risk. More expensive vehicles carry more exposure when something goes wrong. A fender bender in an economy car is a minor repair. The same incident in a luxury SUV puts a permanent mark on the vehicle’s history and meaningfully reduces its resale value, even after the repair is complete.
Strausser points out that once an accident shows up on a Carfax, the vehicle is worth less than an identical one that was never in an accident. For someone financing that vehicle long term, that loss in value comes directly out of their pocket at trade-in or resale. For someone leasing, the guaranteed residual value means they can hand back the keys and walk away. The depreciation hit from the accident becomes D&M’s risk to absorb.
Warranty coverage is the third piece. With more than 20% of vehicle loans now stretching to 84 months, a large share of buyers are financing well past the point where the manufacturer warranty runs out. A lease term typically stays within or close to the original warranty period, which means less exposure to major repair costs during the time someone owns the vehicle.
The fourth factor is service, and Kennemer and Strausser spend the most time here because it’s the part most people don’t expect. High-income clients often have one consultant who has worked with them for years, knows their family, knows their trade cycle, and handles the entire transaction by phone and DocuSign. There’s no dealership lot involved. The consultant sources vehicles across multiple brands, appraises trade-ins, negotiates on the customer’s behalf, and delivers the car to the customer’s home or office.
Strausser describes the model using a comparison to running shoes. A single-brand store will sell a customer whatever shoe they ask for. A multi-brand store asks about how the customer runs, looks at their gait, and might recommend a completely different shoe than the one they came in for, because that’s the one that actually fits. D&M’s consultants operate the same way. They’re brand agnostic, which means the goal is matching the customer to the right vehicle, not steering them toward a specific manufacturer.
The result, according to both Strausser and Kennemer, is that most customers describe the experience the same way. They didn’t expect it to be this simple.
Inside the Lease is a podcast from the leadership team at D&M Leasing, the nation’s largest direct-to-consumer auto leasing company.