This particular car cannot be CPO’d - if Audi gets it back, the receiving dealer will send it back to Audi for auction where they will take a bath on the loss. They would have been much smarter to give Carmax the dealer buyout number and not need to deal with it.
When you process 10,000 lease returns per month across a few brands, as a bank you have to pick the most efficient model that works for 10,000 vehicles, not one off deals where the resources are taken up quickly by trying to determine what’s best for one particular vehicle.
While annoying as a consumer, as it is pointed out above, their vehicle, their rules.
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@Samaudibh - Curious of your advice on the following, would appreciate any guidance!
FWIW - I plan to finance a Tesla after this lease (not another Audi)… wish Audi EVs weren’t so slow / low EPA -_-
2020 S3 S-Line Premium – 25.8k residiual – lease ends 10/31 in California
- Odo @ 11k miles, way under the 22.5k miles incl. in lease terms
- KBB AD instant buyout offer: 31.4k
- Carmax, Carvana, Shift, etc buyout offer: 33k - 34.5k
What is the best option(s) to maximize my equity upon lease end?
- Is there any way to get around the Audi Financial buyout price increase for 3rd party buyout?
- Will ADs pay more than the auto-generated KKB AD offers?
- Is it true you don’t have to pay CA sales tax on the vehicle if title is re-registered to a new owner within 10 days of the original lease buyout (if i buy it cash and have someone ready to buy)?
Thank you!
Looking to unlock the equity in my '21 Q5e prestige with a lease running through 4/2024 and sell now.
Reached out to a local VW dealer who after making a strong offer told me that I could only sell it to an Audi dealer. Is this a new wrinkle or is something else at play?
Separately, I would appreciate any thoughts on how to best go about selling this car. Thanks!
ETA: Illinois
Hi Sam, it looks like you are already in touch with our team at Auto Ninjas, however to answer your question - Audi/VW dealers should interchangeably be able to purchase your lease, however sometimes restrictions are imposed such as the lease term coming to an end, but if you are mid-term then you should be able to sell via either brand dealer. I suppose its possible they may have some internal rules depending on the “level” of dealer, maybe only certain ranking VW dealers are able to purchase Audi’s and you worked with one that didn’t earn the permissions from VW Credit to purchase interchangeably, but in our experience it appears to reciprocate generally speaking.
As an additional note, hybrids and EVs are typically less equitable than their gas counterparts due to the inflated MSRPs and inflated residuals to go with them to keep the lease programs competitive at lease inception, but often its a bit of a kicking the can down the road on these as they are destined to lose a lot of value. This doesn’t make it a bad or undesirable car, just the economics of EV/Hybrids haven’t really balanced out yet and we are feeling that transitionary period right now. Inflated MSRPs with large rebates and discounts is a recipe for poor resale value, which EV/Hybrids generally follow that formula and as a result follow similar equity positions.
-Matt
So if Audi gives a lease buyout, but AutoNation dealer gives a lower price then the buyout, do you pay the difference plus the dispo fee?
I am told carmax won’t buy Audi cars leased by Audi financial.
So am I pretty much stuck with end of my lease?
Autonation stores can purchase Audi lease through their affiliate Audi sister stores and you are on hook for not only dispo but additional hundreds of dollars in buyout fees, depending on what Audi you have, check first post. Oh and yea your negative equity is your debt that you must settle. Audi flips/breaking even mid leade ended 2 years ago.
Just sharing a data point that differs from what others have reported in this thread.
I sold a AFS-leased 2019 Audi to a Florida Audi dealership in 2023, after the 3/1/22 policy change.
I sold it because i had a little equity and wanted to avoid the dispo fee. At the time of sale, I was on a lease extention.
The only fee I was charged was the $100 buy fee.
• No disposition fee
• No segment fee
• No other charges
The purchasing Audi dealership is not part of AutoNation. It also wasn’t the same Audi dealership I originally leased the car from.
@Samaudibh … any idea why I wasn’t subject to those fees selling the car to a dealer?
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I know this is an old post but hopefully you’ll see this! I have an Audi lease that’s set to end in September. My understanding of a third party buyout when I started my lease is that their buyout amount would be the same as mine, and I could receive the equity of whatever the dealership offered to pay for the vehicle that exceeded the buy out amount. However after talking to Audi financial, in order to sell to a third company, the dealer goes thru a link (payoffs.openlane.com) where they’re given a fair market value to buy off the lease. Regardless of if that amount is higher than my buy off amount at that time, I don’t get any check for equity. I was so disappointed by this process. I’m hoping that if I present my lease to a dealership to purchase that they would be transparent with what the website says their buyout amount is. And then I could compare that to a known value of the car and then potentially negotiate for money paid back to me. I imagine this would likely only happen if I was going to either purchase or lease a vehicle from that dealership, or if for whatever reason their buy off amount is way lower than what they could sell the car for. Any thoughts on this scenario?