After browsing for hours this is my first post so bear with me. I hope I do everything correctly! My 2018 Toyota Rav4 lease is up on December 31st. I would like to lease another Rav4 as I really liked the car. I would like to stick with a lease because of the tax advantages as an independent contractor.
My payment is $360 and my mileage is 27k. My buyout is $20k. Knowing the market for used cars right now I did get a Carvana quote of $25k. The sticky part of the situation is I am with Southeast Toyota Finance and they do not allow third party buyouts.
I am trying to figure out my best course of action. In my brief texts with the same dealer I got the original lease from is quoting the same model XLE for $499 a month and nothing down. He says it will take 6 to 8 weeks to get the car depending on what color I want. I do not want to pay that much for a Toyota lease.
I would hate to just hand over the car and let them get all of the equity but I know that I don’t have any bargaining chips here. Does it make sense to try to buy the car (I could probably pull together the cash), resell to Carvana, then lease? If I had to get a loan would that still make sense? I am concerned about taxes on both the purchase and the new lease eating into any equity (and if I had to get a loan even more eating into the equity). Also, he had no idea what my credit is when he quoted that $499 a month so I don’t know how he can say that. My FICO 8 Auto score is 730.
I can drive my husbands car if I need to and wait for delivery. Any advice here? Does it make sense to go through the hassle of buy, sell, lease? Should I shop around dealers too? I am happy to drive to pickup. I have a previous habit of doing cars impulsively so I just want to be smart about this and get the deal possible. Thank you!