I have a 2021 Honda Civic Hatchback on a 3 year lease expiring in August (about 17.5K miles out of 30K allowed). Looking on Autotrader in my area, prices look like somewhere between 22-25K. Our residual is $16.8K.
We are looking at leasing a 2024 Hyundai Tucson Hybrid Limited. In general we don’t want to keep driving the Civic.
With the positive equity in my lease, I’m trying to figure out how to handle leasing a new car and unlocking the equity in my existing lease. Specifically:
How do I sell the leased car and to whom? I obviously have to buy it out from the existing dealer…but how does this transaction go down?
Should I assume these Autotrader prices are remotely accurate? Where else is more accurate?
Can/should the new lease have anything to do with the former transaction?
If there are any other considerations I should know about, I’d welcome them!
Autotrader will largely be what dealers are selling similar cars for (retail price), not what they’ll pay you.
Honda only lets you buy out lease or sell to a Honda dealer IIRC, so your options are limited. You can put your vin through carvana/carmax to get a rough idea of trade in value and see if a Honda dealer will buy it out at that price. If not, I believe you need to purchase the car from Honda Financial and pay sales tax on it, which will probably eat all of your positive equity.
Got it - thanks! - so you would just shop around for the best deal to “sell” the existing car (aka have them buy my lease out and write me a check for $-ive equity), do that transaction, and then lease a new car?
You make it sound so easy pouring through the resources here, it seems like. my best move is to shop around for the lowest price, have dealers compete against each other, and then once we have a price agreed, then move to discussing terms of a lease on $0 down. Negotiate money factor and fees if possible. Otherwise, what am I missing?
First step should be to figure out which cars lease well. If you are already 100% set on the car you want to get, then you should run the numbers whether leasing or financing that particular car makes more sense.
Figure out what you’re willing to pay based on what the market will support (on the low end of course), and then make offers accordingly.
Move onto the next dealer when you get a no, and sign right away when you get a taker.
I did my most recent lease with the first dealer I contacted (not counting a previous test drive, which was strictly to experience the vehicle before getting one).
You really need to understand the numbers to do this, but no matter what your shopping style is, I would advise having a detailed understanding of where the numbers come from and how the lease cost is calculated.
You have to know what the goal is before you start, and for most people this is a significant financial decision given the total number of dollars involved in most leases.
There were dozens of comps for my target vehicle in Marketplace.
Once you understand the calculations and where to get the inputs, the main thing to focus on is dealer discount (since any incentives come from the manufacturer).
Sure, money factors can be marked up, but you can make up for that with a larger dealer discount.
Note that if you don’t see much mention of a specific vehicle in Marketplace, it may just not be a good lease candidate. See if buying it makes more sense instead.
It is easy. People make it way too difficult to avoid spending a little bit if time upfront.
Step 1: Establish a well-researched target deal based on pre-incentive discounts supported by the market (look at shared deals and broker listings for references) and the lease programs as they apply to your personal situation (fill out the calculator using the pre-incentive discount you researched, the mf/rv/incentives pulled from a source like Ratefindr and the taxes and fees for your area)
Step 2: make an unambiguous, easily executable offer to a dealer (i.e. i am interested in stock #xxxx. If you can do $500/mo with $1000 due at signing for a 36/10 for zip code xxxxx, with yyyy incentives and z tax rate, I can come take delivery in the next 2 hours)
Step 3: if a dealer says no, thank them and move on to the next. Repeat step 2.
No where in that process should you ever ask a dealer for offers, beat around the bush for the deal youre looking for, etc. Know what your deal is, hold firm to it, and understand you will likely get multiple “no” before you get a “yes”. Thats ok.
Hi all - I have a 2021 Honda Civic with 19,700 miles on it in great condition with a lease ending later this month. The lease buyout amount is $16,100 so I know there is positive equity on this, but I am trying to figure out what options I have for selling this car. I’m seeing some conflicting information on the ability to sell to 3rd parties (i.e non-Honda):
Carvana said we can’t buy my car
A Toyota dealer said they can but there would be a $500 fee involved (that Honda mandates)
Autonation saying they can buy the car
Does anyone have experience with this and have advice on how to navigate this type of deal? I would especially appreciate insights into taxes, both on selling this car, and the possible route of trading it in for a new car from a dealer.
Approved Dealer - Honda , Autonation , Longo, Any other big dealership, No Taxes, buyout price + $300 fee
Non Approved Dealer - Carmax, Carvana, Smaller Dealerships that aren’t related to other ones, Buyout price + Large Market Fee + $300 fee
Personal Buyout - You buy it for yourself - Buyout Price + New Registrations + Tax on buyout price + 300 fee
Private Party - Putting it on FB Marketplace and hoping for the best. Personal Buyout - Whatever you sell it for
So what you listed above is correct, the Buyout fee used to be $300 (Maybe now $500?), go to Carvana/Carmax, tell them it’s your own car and get a $$$ value for it so you know what Autonation/ Honda will pay.
pouring through the resources here, it seems like. my best move is to shop around for the lowest price, have dealers compete against each other, and then once we have a price agreed, then move to discussing terms of a lease on $0 down. Negotiate money factor and fees if possible. Otherwise, what am I missing?