Last month I transferred my i4 lease to someone else (CA in-state), it was my first lease and also my first lease transfer. I love data points so I wanted to post mine here, especially as I always see tons of BMW leases posted for transfer. Hopefully this is useful for some folks out there, happy to answer any questions.
Leasetrader (LT)
I wanna say up front that I am not bashing on LT - my listing got tons of views there and I would consider using them again, but as a first-time user I did learn a few lessons.
I posted the car here on LH and also on an i4 forum I frequented, but I got the most traction on LT - over the course of ~6 weeks I got messages from at least a dozen people. LT has a credit check feature that TBH I didn’t and still don’t understand super well since it only applies to shoppers and not sellers, but the big lesson I learned from this whole process is don’t trust the LT credit check too much and vet potential buyers yourself.
LT does clearly state that passing the LT credit check does not mean the applicant will pass the actual leasing company’s credit check (which I read and understood up front), but you really gotta keep that in mind throughout the process. In my case, two people that passed the LT credit check failed the BMWFS credit check (I think one of them failed immediately without further review).
After those two people, I started to ask potential buyers some questions to gauge their credit history. Have you had an auto loan/lease before? What’s your credit score?
The other oddity with LT is that they seem to suggest that they will act on your behalf and reach out to the leasing company for you to facilitate the transfer process. I ended up selling the car to someone here on LH so I never fully went through that process, but it seemed weird to me - I assume BMWFS would need my explicit authorization for a 3rd party to handle the transfer, or might not even allow a 3rd party to be involved at all.
BMWFS
I tried 3 times to have BMWFS transfer the lease, after the first two applicants failed their credit check. It definitely feels like this is bread and butter for them - the documentation was great (I attached the process overview they sent me below), the automated comms from their systems was excellent, the 3 agents I talked to handled all 3 attempts pretty nearly identically, and the lease transferred really fast in my case: 3 business days from start to finish. That’s just one data point and I wouldn’t want to tell someone to expect a similarly fast transfer process themselves, but I guess the stars aligned in my case lol.
To start the process, you get the buyer’s full legal name and their email address, call up BMWFS, and tell them you want to transfer the lease. You pay the leas assumption fee, then BMWFS reaches out to the buyer by email with an application link.
One weird issue I didn’t follow up with was how BMWFS charges the $500 (plus tax) lease assumption fee when you have a failed transfer. BMWFS consistently told me that the current account holder (me) has to pay the fee up front before they will start the process (i.e. before they check the buyer’s credit). I tried the transfer 3 times and paid the fee twice which doesn’t make sense - either I should’ve paid it once (for the 1 successful transfer) or paid it three times (for the 3 attempts).
BMWFS_Lease_Assumption_Process.PDF (123.1 KB)