Need Advice on Selling My Leased 2017 Highlander XLE - End of Lease

Hi all! Need some major advice. My last payment on my 3 year lease for my 2017 Highlander is next month. I was planning on buying it out but ultimately had a change of heart. The dealership has been blowing up my phone since November wanting my car and saying it’s a hot car right now. I’ve been ignoring them but should I call and see what they offer? Or is my only option with the dealer to return my car at lease end? (sorry…sounds like a dumb question).

FWIW, it’s a 2017 Highlander XLE with captain’s chairs (not very common in the XLE). I only have 27k miles on it (this is a 3 year, 36k mile lease) and I purchased the extended warranty last year because I thought I was going to buy it out.

I’ve been looking on Carmax today and my same model with 25k-35k miles is going for anywhere from $28k - $33k and that’s without captains chairs. My residual value is $26,962.

I’d really like to sell the car and make some money if that’s a possibility. What are my best options? Sell to Carmax? Private party?

Thanks in advance for your help. Also, I’m in southern California.

Go to carvana, plug in your highlander info, and come back with the number and your purchase buyout from Toyota to compare.

What CarMax is selling for is pretty irrelevant. You need to know what they’re buying for, although carvana, shift, and vroom seem to be offering more these days.

If you buy it and sell it private party, you basically have 10 days to get the title and get it transferred before you’re on the hook for sales tax.

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Thanks. I just went to carvana and vroom. Carvana offered $23k. Vroom offered $26,200. :frowning:

Your best bet is probably to just turn it in then. I’d be surprised if you got a better offer from CarMax or the Toyota dealer.

I think the real question is what do you want to do next? Do you want to lease another Toyota? New Highlander is out but the leases won’t be pretty for a while.

Lease something else? Or purchase? If you wanna buy/finance something then you could absolutely push for a higher figure than your buyout but it sounds like just turning it in might be your best bet.

What they are selling for on Carmax is the retail price. When you trade a car in, you do not get retail. Considering that Carvana and Vroom are offering below your residual value, then clearly your best option is to just turn it in. You don’t have equity

Okay, thanks everyone for the help! I appreciate it.

I’ve never had any luck with Carvana or Carmax or the like. Selling private party is a PITA too. If you want to wait for the 2020 Highlanders to become more reasonable for a lease, just call and extend your current lease month to month (can do for up to 6 months). My lease on my 17 Highlander was up on January 2nd and that’s what I did. You’re not going to make any money on trying to sell it. I looked into that before mine was up. If you just want out of it, just take it back.

Try SHIFT! They operate in CA and OR only. They were FAST. Inspected and picked up the car from me in a few days. Payment sent 2-3 days later. A week max. Vroom took me almost a month.

Use that code and we both get $100 gift card :slight_smile:

Hey did you buy any chance go through with the sell? I’m in a similar circumstance as you and I’m a couple thousand in equity on my Highlander lease.

A used-car dealership offered $500 more than Carmax; Vroom and Carvana both offered ~$2,000ish less.

What’d you end up doing?

Make sure they are actually going to pay off your lease in a timely fashion

If my knowledge is correct (at least from what I’ve been reading), if you do it at a place like Carmax, they sit you down and call Toyota financial together. If I do this at a used-car dealership, (call them together), how do I make sure they paid it off in timely fashion?

My lease end date is the 26th, so I do have a bit more time to get things organized, and since this is my first time selling a lease, I don’t want to end up having to pay more fees and such than I would have if I went to a Carmax.

Approach it like any other big-ticket transaction. Do your research, read reviews, see if they are trustworthy. If you proceed, get their promises in writing

I’ve been trying, but a lot of things online seem to be about people selling it to Carmax, Vroom, or Carvana making the process and transaction extremely smooth easy or about people selling their lease to a private party, which seems to go parallel with how any private party car purchase would go.

I’ve been having trouble finding anything about people selling it to used-car dealerships, and therefore the process of what I need to make sure of. Another dealership gave me two forms to fill out (one of them was Form 1110G (I’m probably wrong, the printout wasn’t very legible), but they straight up lied to me and told me they’re doing me a favor by paying the $300 disposition fee for me.

There’s no such as a generic used-car dealership lease payoff experience so there’s no point researching that.

Research the particular dealer whose offer you’re evaluating. Like read literally every review of that one dealership, paying close attention to trade payoff stories inside those reviews.

I have researched the dealer. They’ve been the only ones in the area that have been forward with me regarding matching or beating the Carmax offer.

I’m just curious about what even the steps are at even Carmax because I’ve never sold a lease. I’d just like even a skeleton experience or procedural steps into selling leases.

  1. Get offer (which I did)
  2. Call Toyotal Financial together?
  3. Sign over the lease agreement or at least the lease purchase option to the dealership
  4. They send the money to TF and they write me another check for the difference
  5. Finish up forms
  6. Done deal, but check up with TF if they received the money from the dealership? (which I assume I can just do through their online portal)
  7. No need to worry about sales tax because it was sold to a dealership

Is this more or less correct?

Edit: Is contacting the dealership from where I got the car necessary? A lot of people seemed to have issues where the dealership tries to undercut people selling to other dealerships

Don’t limit yourself to Carmax with the likes of Algo, Carvana, Vroom and alike.

Algo, Carvana, and Vroom all offered me below my residual which I found pretty shocking considering it’s a 2018 Highlander with only 17,000 miles on a 36k allowance. :frowning:

The process has been thoroughly discussed in the Vroom, ALGO and Carvana threads on this forum.

No, contacting the original dealership is pointless. They have nothing to do with your lease any more.

What’s shocking, there’s probably tons of under mileage cars rolling through the auction. Why would they pay more for yours? There’s probably thousands of people just like you turning in a lease that is under miles.