I have a deal brewing where I get a higher MF and more cash off up-front.
Given the value, I’m considering taking the deal, and just buying out the car in two months with cash I have sitting idle.
But I’m using a broker and I don’t want to burn the dealer the broker works with (I don’t care a ton, but I care a little).
Does me buying the car out of the lease early hurt the dealer either in some sort of rating from the finance company or directly with a financial penalty? Or once the deal is signed, does the dealer get their commission and that’s the end of it?
Does this car have a lease promotion tied to it? If not, it’s probably less expensive and way less headache to just buy it in cash from the start. A few months of interest (the highest amount of rent charge is going to be the first months) and the lease acq fee, buyout fee, possibly early payoff fees etc might make it not worth it at all. This is especially true if you live in a state or the finance company forces you to buyout through a dealer. Most dealers will force at minimum an inspection, new doc fee etc.
You can pay down the majority of the balance as soon as the account is online and then pay next-to-no interest for the next 3 months before closing the account.
The larger question is whether you’re getting a good deal.
I know you said it can vary, but what the charge back to the dealer typically “look” like (when the lease buyout occurs in the first 3 mos). There’s loss of commission, but is there some other sort of penalty?
Speculation here: I am not aware of any penalty with the exception of the commission or the portion of the Acquistion fee, the dealer gets to keep from originating the transaction being clawed back by the lessor.
Ideally someone on here with more of a grasp of the inner workings can fill us in.
OK - I’ll make it all a little more complicated to explain some of my reasoning.
I want to get an EV. The only way I’ll get the $7500 rebate is to lease.
I live in California, but this car is going to a second house in Hawaii. It’s just not competitive to acquire the car there. But if I buy it here (or buy out the lease here) I have to pay California sales tax. In some cases, California dealers will apparently deliver a car to Hawaii and then the owner just pays Hawaii sales tax, but I can’t make this happen on this car for reasons I don’t understand.
So my plan is to lease the car, get the rebate off the cap cost, and ship it to Hawaii myself (which costs about $2500). Then I register it there, tell the lease company, who adjusts the sales tax, and then I buy it out. Hawaii sales tax is about 5% less than California sales tax, in the two jurisdictions where I’d register the car.
