My BMX X1 lease is almost up and with the market being the way it is currently, it makes more sense for me to purchase the car and pocket the equity.
BMW FS says I have to purchase through a dealer since I live in PA.
I received a quote from the dealer that includes a 449.00 “Doc Fee” and 186.47 “Non Tax Fees.” Is this legit? I was under the impression I only needed to pay the RV, Tax, and Title transfer fee?
You’re not pocketing any equity. If anything you are probably paying more than the car is worth.
Equity and BMW in the same sentence?
How much did you put down? Are they at least CPO’ing it for you?
I could get over 32K for this car today if I had a title in hand, not sure where you’re getting the notion I’m paying more than the car’s worth.
I put $0 down and was paying 360/month. I’m not going to a get a deal like that anywhere in this current market.
Anyone out there who can actually answer my original question of whether a $449 doc fee on a lease buyout is legitimate or another stealership scam?
2020 CPO X3 are in the low 30’s…
No ones paying 32K for a non CPO private party X1.
As for the doc fee it does seem to be standard practice if you’re buying it out through a dealer.
If you’re asking whether or not you have to pay it, yes, if you need to do the buyout thru a dealer, they are going to charge you a doc fee. If you want, you can “shop around” for dealers to buy out thru and see who gives you the lowest doc fee. You could also see if you can buy it out from a NY dealer, which theoretically have capped doc fees, but it doesn’t mean they won’t pull something to get around it.
TL;DR yes you will need to pay a doc fee somewhere, but you can try to negotiate it if you really want, or shop around and try to find a dealer with a cheaper fee, but consider what your time is worth because you’re probably not going to save much by doing this.
You may have some equity in it, who gave you that 32k offer? Seems quite high though, how many miles?
60k per turn-in sheet.
That sheet shows a 2017 X1 with 60k miles. Figured it was safe to assume that was not the vehicle in question.
You’re probably right, if the doc fee is standard practice nowadays, then it’s probably not worth the effort to try and save a few hundred bucks. While I’ve leased quite a few cars over the years, I’ve never actually been in a position where it made more fiscal sense to purchase the car at lease end so I wanted to first make sure the doc fee was kosher. I appreciate your pragmatic reply to my question.
Ahhh, didn’t even see that!
Ah, I see the confusion now. I have no idea why the dealer wrote it up like that but the car I have now is a 2020 X1 with less than 8K miles on it. Once the pandemic hit I started working from home so I racked up a lot less miles than I was expecting.
With those miles and your buyout, it certainly makes sense to buy it out. But don’t be surprised that in less than a year that “equity” likely disappears.
If you care about equity why not list it private party then and have the dealer do an in and out once you find a buyer?
Your dealer gets a guaranteed buyer, you get to cash in on some equity and your buyer gets a CPO’d car. Everybody is happy and no one leaves feeling they got taken for a ride.
The doc fee is standard practice nowadays anytime you buy or lease a new car, and pretty much anytime you have to buyout your lease through a dealer.
What is relatively new (past 1-2 years?) is BMWFS forcing customers in certain states to go through a dealer to buyout their lease.
In the past you would just mail a check directly to BMWFS for your payoff and they would send you the title, easy peasy, you never had to involve a dealer and their bogus fees for 10 mins worth of work.
Here are two relevant threads with information on dealers that will help save you some $$$
Or just sell it to the highest bidder among brokers, dealers and dealership holding companies (Autonation, Penske, etc).
Much easier than finding a private buyer plus finding a dealer who wants to facilitate this without an arm and a leg.
huh, since when - I’m not aware of any law on the book saying that in PA.
Did BMWFS directly say this, because this is news to me.
When I first considered buying out the lease that’s exactly what I thought I could do. Simply, send a check to BMW FS and be done with it. Sadly, that no longer seems to be the case. Thank you for including the other threads, I’ll be sure to check those out.
