I’m only curious about this – I am not in a position of having a lease with negative equity! And my apologies if this has been discussed before, but I didn’t see any such posts.
I enjoy reading the “worst leases” thread, and it seems a good number of the awful lease takeovers have rolled-in negative equity. It’s my understanding that auto insurance pays off the entire lease amount if a vehicle is totaled, so how would that apply to a lease with, say, $10k in equity from a trade-in included in the life of the lease?
Insurance company would pay out whatever is the agreed fair market value of the car, any equity (overage) generally would go to the customer as I understand it (payoff amount sent to lienholder, remainder to customer).
Not entirely sure if that’s so simple. GAP coverage has its limits, usually set at 25% of “actual value”. The way I understand it, and I might be wrong as I’m no insurance professional. Say you buy a $40k car at 5% discount from MSRP, get it off the lot and the actual value drops by ~15%, you roll in another $8k in negative equity (to keep it in 20%) and total it on next intersection. Your numbers:
your balance $40,000*0.95 + $8,000 = $46,000 - “responsibility” is independent if loan or lease
car “value” at 85% MSRP - $34,000
primary insurance pays - $34,000 - good luck with that
GAP pays up to 25% of car “value”- $8,500
total insurance paid - $42,500
By my math you still owe $3,500 to the bank. I’d be fairly confident your premium will take a solid hike regardless of how long you’ve been with your insurance company. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if the assessed value of the car dropped more than 15% the moment you drove it off the lot with certain brands.
