Lease Buyout Help - Transfer Title from CA to TX?

Ask the Hackrs Buy/Finance
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So I’ve read a lot on the forums here, and I think I have information overload so hopefully I’m able to articulate this.

I have a 2020 VW Jetta (Titled and Registered in CA). The lease is $250/Monthly, 11.5k miles, residual is $12,459.20, and the Payoff quote is $18,029.70. Unfortunately, my life got a bit complicated and I’d really just like to get an inexpensive used vehicle. So I started shopping around the various online dealers (Carvana, Shift, Vroom, etc.) to get an idea for what my car is worth.

Autonation - $23,000
Carvana - $22,330
Vroom - $20,453
Shift - $20,200

So it seems like at face value I’m in a good position, but some of the other peoples experiences with VWCredit and these various dealers is less than ideal. I was able to get Navy Federal to approve me for the Payoff amount. After calling VWCredit they stated they will be sending me the title directly to me (if I decide to pursue this) which I assume based on what I’ve read I’ll need to get the Title Transferred into my name at CA DMV with Navy Fed as the lien holder.

This is where my head starts to hurt a bit. I’m not a California resident (Active Duty), and before I started looking down this option my intentions to transfer registration to Texas anyway (home of record). According to what I’ve read, the DMV takes a stupid amount of time and AAA can apparently speed up the process but I guess CA makes you pay taxes (is this on the residual or payoff amount??) when you transfer the title unless you sell within 10 days. Mileage seems to vary for many people on here successfully doing this.

I know I could probably reduce the complexity by just letting an online dealer work it out and praying VWCredit doesn’t markup the value and I breakeven, but I’d like to make a little bit of cash if I can.

Are there any creative solutions to this?
Do I HAVE transfer the title in CA?
Or can transfer title from CA to TX (To potentially avoid this 10 day tax rule)?
Or do I just need to suck it up and see where am I’m at after financing? Thank you for reading any advice is greatly appreciated!

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If you buy the vehicle out to keep it, you’ll be paying sales tax on it. If you do that in CA, it’ll be CA tax. If you relocate it to Texas and then buy it out there, it’ll be Texas tax. There’s no way out of paying tax on it unless you buy it and flip it immediately in CA.

Vw will charge market rate to a 3rd party dealer.

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That’s the thing I don’t want to keep the vehicle. I know CA has the 10 day resell grace period. I’m trying to find out if TX has a similar thing or if I’m even able to do that since the Title was originally in CA?

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California is the only state with such a thing.

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