I’ve done a lot of research on early lease buyouts, and I’m finding a lot of conflicting information. I’m hoping the community here can help clear it up.
If I choose to lease a car, and then well before the end of the lease I decide I want to buy the car, what do I owe the lease finance company? I know I will owe the residual, sales tax and title transfer fees. However, what about the remaining lease payments? The payment is comprised of monthly depreciation, monthly rent and sales tax. Am I responsible for the remaining rent or only the remaining unpaid depreciation and sales tax on that depreciation?
There is a section in the lease titled: “PURCHASE OPTION PRIOR TO END OF LEASE TERM”. I have quite a bit of business contracting experience and I cannot determine if the language in this section says I owe the unpaid rent or not. I can post the language here if helpful.
I don’t see any early lease buyout penalties.
So my basic question is if I buyout the lease early (as early as month 3 for example), will I be required to pay 33 months of rent or just the principal, residual, sales tax and fees?
You just pay what is owed. There aren’t any penalties. Rent charges are all part of monthly. But then, depending on your state, you have to pay sales tax on what you just bought, which can be significant.
Yes. The buyout price listed in contract is the price you can buy the car are at lease end.
Prior to lease end buyout price will be decreasing from starting sale price with each and every payment.
So after 3 months you will own final residual plus 33 payments of residual. But I don’t think all of 33 payments of interests since you are prepaying loan balance off.
It depends on the leasing company. I have had some that charge for the unbilled rent payments and some that do not. Calling Acura Finance is the only true way of knowing how much is still owed.
I just spoke to a customer service rep at Acura FS. She indicated that I will owe 100% of the remaining payments plus residual plus tax plus title transfer if I end the lease early and buy the car. Now you all may be wondering why I’m asking this silly question. Here’s why:
Yesterday I was at a very reputable Acura dealer in NorCal from 8:30 to 11:00pm “buying” an MDX. I had pre-negotiated the deal during the week via phone, text and email. It was a very good deal, but not a killer one. The car is exactly what I want (AWD, Advanced and colors I want), and it’s the only one like it in the Western US (I checked every dealers inventory). I’ve never leased a car before because our family keeps cars for decades. My first new car ever was a 1994 Isuzu Rodeo and it is still in the family! My daily driver is a 2004 Lexus GX470 with nearly 250K miles that we bought new.
However, the dealer talked me into a lease with huge incentives and said with 100% certainty, you can buy this out later and you won’t have to pay the remaining rent. You will only owe the remaining depreciation. I think they think that this is actually a true statement. If it were true I’d save an incremental $4K over a loan. If untrue I’d spend $2K more.
We agreed that if I’m not comfortable with the lease I have until Saturday to flip it back to the purchase I had already negotiated. So I’m about to head over there now and undo what I did at 11:00 last night. Hopefully this doesn’t turn into a pissing contest where they try to keep me in a lease I don’t want or need.
Acura FS says I will have to pay the remaining rent on the lease. The dealer says I will not. Since AFS is who I have to deal with going forward I’m obviously going to go with their opinion on this. Thank you all for your input.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never heard of a captive that would not charge the remaining rent in event of an early lease payoff. Generally speaking it’s not even structured that way. A loan is: you pay more interest in the early part and less and less at you get to loan maturity. The latter also applies to mortgage as well.
To be accurate, you are paying interest on the car itself as well, not just the lease, so that portion of the rent payment would be consistent through out the term, even with only 4 months to go. Different than a mortgage as the balance doesn’t technically go to zero at the end of term.
I haven’t done it but pretty sure several captives will provide an adjusted buyout figure which will be less due to the reduced interest owed based on that particular date.
Yes that’s a good point. No arguments there. Too bad we don’t have a list of which captives do and don’t. Maybe we all need to pitch in and create a LH data center that has all of these sort of info.
I believe that dealer did think it’s true. But as we’ve seen snot all of the know and fully understand leases.
You will own remaining rent at least for sure on the portion of the depreciation. Rent change (or interest) was only technically in question.
But as Acura financial confirmed they will try to capture even interest from you. Good that you checked.
This logic can work on lease to buy but only coupled with not just great discount but also great rebate for leases that isn’t otherwise available for retail sale.
If the lease rebates are 4K higher wouldn’t the mf need to be pretty high to make it more expensive? I sold a one pay lease within a month of getting it and GM sent me a check a month later for the interest/unused rent (was a great surprise)
I always assumed you would have to pay all the payments (depreciation and rent) plus residual.
Also I am curious if the dealer honors their agreement to switch it to a purchase. I always figured dealers lie about giving you time to make a change. Years ago one dealer told me just sign the lease now and if you find a better payment within a week we will match it. I didn’t take them up on the offer because it just sounds like a mess.
Since I’m a newbie to leasing I didn’t realize that interest is collected on the entire value of the car, not just the depreciation. It appears that this is all a shell game. Offer a big incentive, but offset that with a high interest rate buried in the MF which I’m guessing few people take the time to understand.
They tried to change the parameters of the purchase deal, but I kept the details of the offer in writing and pointed them right back to it. After some wrangling and posturing with management everyone settled down and they agreed to honor what I had in writing from 11pm the night before. The lease was cancelled and I purchased the car instead.
In situations like this time is of the essence. The longer you wait the fuzzier it gets. I’m certain that if I had waited until the weekend or early next week this would have become a real problem.
Also I saved all of our text messages documenting that they would absolutely rewrite the deal if I changed my mind within a few days. This was not fun, but ended ok. Thanks again to the community here for your assistance.
I’m trying to work through this now with the current lease incentives. I think I could save $2-4k on a MDX Tech by leasing and buying out after 1-3 months.
Our current 2017 MDX payoff price is lower than what we would normally pay (4 payments +Residual). So it does seem that Acura does not collect the rent portion.
It would save $574 to buy out our lease today rather than in October. So, based on that it seems that the dealer is correct and AFS is either wrong or not understanding the question.
Has this been figured out yet? I’m thinking of a similar deal with the lease incentives being so high now. Would a one pay lease or doing a 24 month lease then immediately buying out the car be cheaper. I’m trying to figure out the same thing about being responsible for the interest on the remaining payments if I paid off the lease and residual early.
I think it would be worth the effort to call Acura Financial Services customer service and hear what they have to say. When I called a few months ago the customer service rep was very crystal clear indicating that the payoff would include 100% of the unpaid interest amount.
What are the lease incentives right now on MDX and RDX? I’m gearing up purchase or lease an RDX for my parents. We’re pretty happy with the MDX we purchased earlier this summer.
If the lease incentives are aggressive enough maybe it makes sense to lease and then buyout at the end of the lease vs financing up front.
