BMW lease totaled by hurricane flood damage in Florida, 1 year into 3 year lease. What happens now?

Dealer held onto the car for 6 weeks only to finally tell me it was totaled.

Insurance had already paid me for the initial diagnostic claim and made it seem like it was fine but now they say it is totaled.

Will my active lease transfer to another similar car? Will insurance just use me as a conduit to buy it out and my lease ends?

Sorry for the stupid questions but this is the first insurance claim I’ve ever made in my life.

I know my down payment is gone, my fault for putting money down on a lease. At this point I just want a car, taking ubers to get groceries and haircuts is getting old very fast…

Thank you for any help.

  1. No. But your contract may have verbiage on this.

  2. They’ll give BMW the payout for the totaled car.

Your BMW lease contract will have information on insurance stuff, I’d take a look or request yours from BMWFS if you want a definitive answer.

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The second one shouldn’t sting so much anymore since it’s probably neggy eggy anyway.

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Prob a blessing in disguise that it got totaled

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Why do you say that? I’m sad lol :pensive:

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Free lease exit on a car that is probably under water.

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It really sucks that your car was totaled in the Hurricane. I’m assuming you made a payment or 2 in the 6 weeks it sat at the dealer waiting for it to be looked at by them and then the insurance company. Fortunately for you, you won’t have to deal with a BMW that has electrical issues due to flooding (in addition to the normal non flooding electrical issues). Did your BMWFS lease include GAP insurance? If so, then that will take care of whatever the difference is between the value of the car and what you owe. Your lease will end. Your insurance company IS NOT responsible for transferring you into a similar car. You are on your own with that one.

Your acq fee (or waiver with rate increase .00050bps) is your gap insurance.

Considering you leased this last year at the peak of the market, you prob got hosed on that deal. You get to walk away scott free and can now shop for a vehicle that leases well unlike a BMW.

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Or a better deal on a BMW.

Shameless plug. :grin:

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I did get an awful deal as I was in the northeast in Sept of 21 and every dealership had maybe 1-3 cars on the lot.

I guess now the only way I could get screwed is if there was no gap insurance or something but I’m pretty sure this was part of the original agreement. Unfortunately the lease paperwork is still in the car so I need to go get that.

Thank you for your help.

Hit up your advisor or FS for a copy.

Confirmed that I had gap insurance so that’s a relief. I suppose it’s time to start shopping for another lease and hopefully not get hosed so badly this time.

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Best of luck. Also points for the maine mariners logo!

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use a broker. well worth the $500 if you are inexperienced. Also, go out of state if you’re in FL or at least as far north/west from miami as you can.

What happens now is you lost all your DAS that you put up at lease inception and gap insurance should cover the remaining balance on the loan. You shop for a new car and life goes on.

Sorry man.

Don’t make the same mistake twice.

If you’d financed a Toyota, Honda, honestly even a Kia etc you’d probably be receiving a nice fat check for the equity instead of having nothing.

Trust me, I’m doing everything I can to get into something for $0 down or as close to $0 as possible.

So uh….what you got in mind?

In the end the car got (severely) hosed, not you! Definitely run it by the forum before signing your next one.