I found something interesting today. I asked my dealer to fax me over the dealer invoice sheet for my deal as I wanted to see how they arrived at the capital cost for the lease. It was supposed to be invoice plus $500. The report confirmed this markup and also showed the additional charges against the file. For example: PDI (labour @ $180.00) and wheel locks, read mud guards, etc.). I guess there must be allot of freight cost @ $1,590.00 (Canada) or a fair bit of profit.
Now to the point. On the cost sheet I saw the Honda Canada Finance "Buy" (to the dealer, I assume) to be 1% and the "Sell" rate to the customer (on a 36 month lease) to be 4.4% (the current Honda advertised APR for 36 month leases.
This leads me to conclude that the dealer is making a 3.3% spread between what they are paying for the money and what they are charging the lessee. If this is the case, I can see why some dealers are selling below invoice, even if there is no evidence of a "hold back" by Honda.