Lease subvention climbed more than 5 percent year-over-year in September, which was the first increase in seven months, according to Autodata Corp. data in the latest Guidelines report from NADA Used Car Guide.

The report noted that this lease subvention increase occurred even as overall finance subvention fell 4.7 percent, per Autodata.

And lease origination figures from recent months look pretty solid, as well.

According to data provided to Auto Remarketing on Friday by J.D. Power and Associates, the combined lease volume for August and September exceeded 505,000 units.

This represents a 121,000-unit increase from the same period of 2012.

As reported recently in Auto Remarketing’s recap of a conference call from Manheim chief economist Tom Webb, J.D. Power has forecasted that there will be more than 3 million leases written for full-year 2013.

So far this year, lease volume has reached 2.17 million units, according to the J.D. Power data.  

While lease penetration figures may differ from source to source, numbers appear to be up from a year ago.

“The shift in the new-vehicle market has been increasing skewed toward higher-income households,” Webb said during his quarterly conference call earlier this month. “That is a trend which will continue. I believe these people like to trade on a short cycle and therefore leasing is the preferred product for them.

“As a matter of fact, I strongly believe there more people today in a very long retail contract that would have been better off in a lease than people who are in a lease and should have been in a retail contract,” he added.
 

Joe Overby can be reached at joverby@autoremarketing.com. Continue the conversation with Auto Remarketing on both LinkedIn and Twitter.