My suggestion is when people write about their deals, take out trades from the equation. Trades, whether with positive or negative equity skew the numbers. I can turn a $500/mo lease into a $0 lease with a trade. If I then post that I got a $0 lease, it’s a meaningless number.
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But then we won’t get entertainment about arguing that Trades are Not Equity…lol
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Overpays on trade include equity.
Only way trades are worth it is if it’s above MMR. If’s above MMR, then it can be counted as “discount” IMO.
It should only be counted as a discount if its additional trade value only available if the trade happens as part of the new deal and wouldnt be available if sold independently.
I have sold lots of cars for over MMR as stand alone transactions. That doesnt make the overage a discount on a deal that doesnt exist.
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Trade is basically the same as DAS. It’s still cash added into the deal.
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I agree but typically speaking MMR is the baseline. IME, over MMR doesn’t really happen anymore since the great flip ended.
I shop any trade pretty hard (as I’m sure most of us do) to get a sense of what I can get. Anything above my next best offer I’ll call equity or an overpay which can sometimes be 2-3k.
No matter how hard you shop a trade it will always be worse than selling private. Now if it’s a junker, the extra few hundred dollars, whatever. But if you’re talking a $30, 40, $50K car, the delta between trade in value and private party value is serious money. I haven’t done a trade in probably 15 years.
And yeah I know, it takes some time and you may have to deal with low ballers, etc. To me that’s well worth a $5K difference.
Yeah in my case I’m rolling one lease that allows buyout into another.
Totally agree a private sale if you have the patience is the way to go when you have a title in hand.
Ok have fun buying out your lease, paying sales tax, waiting for a title then selling your car (not to mention the time/money invested OR interest on a loan)
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Eh. Sales tax is relatively low in my state. It’s worth the effort for me even with everything you described. On a $40K car it could be $5-7K difference even after taking into account sales tax. Will I wait a couple of weeks and spend 10 or 20 hours to make $7K? HELL YEAH.
But each to their own. Everyone has their own calculus on time value.