MBFS Early trade in

Ask the Hackrs
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#1

Good Evening Hackrs,

My 2018 C300 lease has 10 payments remaining ($398.18). I’m hoping to get out a bit early and purchase a Tesla (leasing isn’t very attractive on one).

MBFS will not provide me with a payoff since I’m in SC and indicated I have to go to a dealer. I’m trying to determine how underwater I am. I got an offer of $23k from Tesla and $23.6k from Carmax. Couple of questions.

  1. Does anyone know if MBFS allows 3rd party buy outs?

  2. Does anyone know how to roughly calculate payoff? My residual is $22,529 plus I have 10 payments remaining so I thought that the residual + payments might be close but I’ve seen some threads where some manufacturers increase payoffs for other brands dealers.

Few other considerations if I keep until term (December). B service will be required in November, 4 new tires will be needed soon (barely above 5/32 now) and there is a small hole in the rocker panel that will need to be repaired if I turn in ($400-600 maybe?).

Thanks everyone. Appreciate anyone who can offer any advice.

#2

You can get your personal buyout from mbfs directly from the website. Use the big blue button that says “request a payoff quote” (at least I can…)

Since you are trading the vehicle into Tesla towards a retail purchase (and not a lease), you don’t really need to mess around with a 3rd party buyout. The sales tax you will pay on the personal buyout will get credited back to you on the purchase as a reduction of the taxable balance of the new Tesla. The only exception would be if you are in state where there is no sales tax for EV purchase.

#3

Thank you! Tax doesn’t matter much here as it’s 5% but capped at $500 so any auto purchase (or difference from trade value to purchase) over $10k hits the max. So I may take extra from Carmax if allowed…

#4

Yeah they all do now AFAIK. Everything is moot until you know the third party payoff.

Have Carmax or whoever is most convenient call them in front of you.

#5

Guess my buy out is $28,025. That’s unfortunate…