Advice: 2020 Corolla lease buyout

Ask the Hackrs Buy/Finance
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Hi folks! Posting this for some advice.

I took over a 2020 Toyota Corolla lease in last summer. The lease ends Jan 2023 and as of now, the car only has 10.5k miles on it. The lease buyout price is $14k, but just one glance and I got a carvana quote for ~$21.5k (~$1k for remaining lease payments, $20.5k for the vehicle itself). Just on this offer, I could take home ~$6.5k, not including taxes (I’m assuming these apply?)

But selling the car would leave me car-less. I could go a few months into 2023 without a car, but I’d need one June 2023. The lease market seems crazy right now and I’m not sure it’ll have recovered by Q2 2023. The other option is to buy the Corolla outright since it’s fairly new (great condition, full maintenance etc.), use it over the next three years (I need it for grad school) and sell it in 2025 (at most, I’d put 15k miles on the car). Of course, it’s nearly impossible to say much about how much of the $14k I can re-coup. Essentially, the tradeoff is between using today’s profit on a future car (which might be leased in a bad market) or buying the Corolla right now and selling it in 3 years’ time.

I’d appreciate your thoughts!! Is it better to sell to carvana now or buy (and later sell)?

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If you decide to sell it, definitely maximize your equity. There are multiple Carvana-type buyers to solicit offers from.

What’s the purchase price on a 2022 Corolla if you were to finance it?

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One of the few tax perks of living in CA, is that if you buy and resell within a 10 day window - you will not have to pay sales tax.

Search in the top right, CA 10 day lease sell and you should see a plethora of posts on this topic.

Carvana might not buy a TFS lease, but there are tons of places you can get an offer from, don’t forget to include traditional dealers - sometimes they might edge out online places and you might get the convenience of walking away with a check the same day from a Toyota dealer.

1 Like
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Trade this in on a new corola hybrid AWD and you can drive that until they ban gasoline cars.