Auto lease residual value question

I've never consider leasing prior vehicles due to our driving habits at the time, but now that we could stay under 15k/year(possibly under 12k) and SWMBO is coming due for a new car, it seems like something to consider.

I've realized though that unlike purchasing a car, where the financial impact is strictly based on purchase price, interest rates, and possibly trade-in value; for a leased car the residual value is almost as important as the purchase price, and thus it seems you could find vehicles with vastly different prices, but would still have similar lease payments, due to the difference in residual - correct?

So I'm wondering if there's an easy way to determine which vehicles have the highest residual value as a percentage of MSRP, without having any specific make/model or even category in mind - does anything like that exist???

I don't know, but I like to look at listings for 3 year old versions of the same car, so give me an idea how much a mode may depreciate. Of course, sometimes a car may change body styles, so then it's value may depreciate more than one that didn't, but it may give you an idea.

I learned of www.leasehackr.com here on GRM. Some good education. Site is focused on California and focused on 10k leases but still good info.

My mom leased a car back in the mid to late 80s and they allowed for 10k mileage per year without penalty then. It's amazing to still see the industry so many years later stuck on that same amount of miles (maybe 12 or 15k in some cases) without penalty when society arguably drives a lot more than that now.

In reply to JohnRW1621:

I've spent some time on leasehackr and certainly learned a lot, but it often seems the specifics of their deals only apply to a small number of people, and certainly any California-only deals would rule me out completely.

I figure there must be a site like KBB, Edmonds, etc. that lists "Top 50 cars with highest residuals" or similar, but I've not found it yet.

If it says toyota or honda on it, high residuals. Trucks too. Low includes gm, Chrysler, and strangely....anything korean. At least thats what i know from endless searching of used cars.

I've never leased a car. Is the "residual" the same as "resale" value? If so, Google the more common terms for what you're talking about; "high resale value" and "low depreciation." Numerous media outlets publish lists of cars with high resale/low depreciation.

In reply to ShadowSix:

Same concept, but not always the same values. So far the closest I've found to an all-in-one source is this Edmunds article which gives top projected resale values by class for 2016 vehicles.