Why are you asking us if you get money back? Ask the insurance company or Nissan Finance
I am not trying to be mean but why should you get anything back? You were effectively long-term renting a car from Nissan Finance, would you expect Hertz to pay you money if you total their rental car?
I mean, I can kind of understand the mind set. If you put a down payment on an item to make the monthly cost cheaper I would think the insurance would look at the residual of the full price of the item (minus depreciation), not the price after the down payment. With that in mind, I would think the refund of the down payment would scale with the residual.
But, I guess it doesn’t matter what we think should happen. Just as @vhooloo said, we’re really the wrong people to ask.
When a car depreciates, it “eats” into the downpayment first. So the lessee is always the last person in line to be given any money back. Which is why one should not put downpayment on leases. And is the reason why dealers always want you to make the downpayment ( because that is their profit).
That is not how it works. Insurance co’s pay out ACV (actual cash value) which is supposed to reflect fair value market of the car. If the ACV exceeds the payoff amount (which rarely but does sometimes happen), you are supposed to get that excess money back.
As far as I know ACV is an adjusted (i.e lower) replacement cost value. So insurance will say replacement cost is x but since the car was driven for a year, which is expected to have a total usable life of 10 years, the ACV will be 0.9x. The leasing company uses a similar assumption for the lease payoff but they don’t base it on replacement cost but rather on the MSRP, which is higher than the replacement cost to begin with. So in theory the ACV cannot exceed the lease payoff.
On cars like Leaf, of course the ACV won’t be higher than the payoff. If you have cars that have deflated RV, you could certainly pocket the difference. Still it is more likely near the end of the lease term, not the beginning.
I started this thread because I wasn’t sure if the cap reduction is reimbursable on accident that isn’t your own fault. If I did a one pay 10K lease and got totalled leaving the lot, does it mean I have to lose the 10K?
I believe there are some special terms for one-pay leases with most of the lenders protecting the lessee but in regular leases you have no claim at your down payment or any fees/taxes you paid upfront in case of total loss of asset. That is why it is Leasing 101 to not pay anything more than first month’s payment at signing.
In that scenario, you should get your money back on a pro-rated basis, based on how deep into the lease you are.
No offense but I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. The lease payoff does not require any assumptions. It is a fixed number at any given point in time. It starts at your cap cost and goes down with each payment down to your RV.
It is based on the lender. Always check the lenders policies before doing a one-pay.
Valid point. YMMV. My comment was somewhat misleading.
I am perfectly aware of how car leases work, the payoff amount at any point during the lease is based on lender’s assumption at the lease inception on how much the car will depreciate over the course of lease term. Lessor calculates the lease end RV based on the MSRP and unless there are significant discounts and rebates at the lease inception (lowering the cap cost beyond the initial actual value depreciation), the lease payoff will always be higher than ACV especially in the first two years of the lease due to lease payoff decreasing on a straight line whereas the ACV decline starts with a steep curve (fastest depreciation on a new car happens within the first 24 months) gradually leveling out and catching up to the lease payoff curve (assuming the RV was accurate).
Long story short; unless you have an exceptionally good lease (of which you would have made money by trading it early) you will not receive any money for totaling your car.