Equity in car when using pull-ahead

Say you’re turning in a lease 4 months early, but it has a 3 month pull ahead. What happens if the market price is less than the buyout when factoring in the four remaining payments, but more than the buyout price if three of those payments didn’t exist? Could that value be used to cover the last payment?

Simple, made-up example: Car has $10K residual and $200/month payment w 4 payments left. If three were waived, how much is the captive bank willing to let the dealer buy that car for? $10,000? $10,200? $10,800? Now if the car was worth $10,150 to the dealer, could I extract that $150 from the dealer to be used toward my last payment? I’m not really concerned with any minor variances that might arise from things like tax, money factor, etc.

If you use pull ahead, any equity goes away.

If the dealer buys it out, pull ahead isn’t applied.

There’s no way to try to leverage both.

Further, what the dealer buy out amount isn’t necessarily related to your residual value.

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Yea, only way to harness any equity is to sell your car to the dealer, not use any pull ahead.

With 4 months left if your payoff is $10,800 and the dealer/Carvana/Vroom/etc. offer is above that, you sell it to them, they pay off the lease and end your contract, and you pocket the difference. As always make sure you’re using the correct payoff.

If you use pull ahead then you turn the car in to the dealer, they end your current lease contract and presumably sell/lease you another car of the same make.

The dealer will typically send your old car to auction or buy it from the bank; At that point you’re totally out of the equation, the amount the dealer can buy the car from is between the bank and dealer.

Of course all of the above assumes this is a true pull ahead, and not some dealer offer to end your lease early where they’re just buying it out and rolling payments/negative into a new car.

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