I currently drive an 09 Mazda5 with 108k, some cosmetic damage and a new effing problem every month. Seriously, I’ve had the brakes/calipers/shocks replaced more than a couple times since I bought it in 2013. I made a horrible decision to stretch out the loan to get my payments down below $200/month, and now I’m underwater. I don’t think I could do a private sale because you can hear the current problems. Trade in value is like $2500 and I owe $4600, 2 years of payments remaining.
I am terrified to buy another used lemon and can’t afford a new car. I need to roll in the negative equity and keep a lease close to $200/month. My work commute is about 4 miles each way. I have a 3 year old.
My parents think leasing is pure crazy and want me to bump my payments up to pay it off faster. I think that the thing could burst into flames any minute, and if I’m going to end up with a useless hunk of junk before I pay it off, why not just pay the same amount monthly and lease something carefree?
So questions:
Should I lease?
Do you think I can lease something other than a Sentra/Rio/Versa for about $200 a month zero down with the - equity rolled in?
thank you! we’re lucky to have a carmax nearby so i will try that. mechanically the car is eh but i do have a dvd player, tinted glass and a remote start (all after market)
Car dealers base the VAST majority of their used car appraisals from the National Automotive Dealership Association’s used-car database appraisal system.
Most care less if you need tires, brakes - even have stained seats.
I was told CarMax has a $1,500 budget to “pretty up” each car they buy.
They are literally putting lipstick on the pig.
Because if they buy a car with a transmission problem, they sell it with a transmission problem and “worry about the fallout” after they sell it.
Even excess mileage overlooked in many cases. I drive over 40,000 miles a year and it is not as big a deal as car dealers have us beLIEve.
Think about it - no way is CarMax doing a detailed inspection in less than 30 minutes. (And by the way, if you have several CarMaxs around, get a quote from each one. I bet one will pay more than the rest.)
Instead, they type our VIN number in and get our car’s worth in mere seconds.
Would you mind coming back here and telling us your good news?
given the milage of 100k+, carmax is going to give you very little because it doesn’t meet their standards to keep for resale so all they’re going to do is offer you just enough so they can flip it at the auction for a few bucks profit.
the only way to get out of this lease is to sell it or use as a trade-in and roll in the negative equity.
$4600/36 mo (normal lease term) = ~$127 so you’d need a new lease for about $70/mo to be under $200 payment. Not sure if thats realistic.
My suggestion is to fix it minimally to get rid of anything obvious and sell it privately, even at a small loss because your car sounds like a long term money pit.
I think I can get ~2000-2500 trade in. Current car is financed to own, not to lease. So I was hoping $2000ish over 36 mo.
The other problem is that no one wants to buy a Mazda5 privately… it’s a pretty niche vehicle, they don’t even make it in the states anymore. I’ve tried on craigslist a couple times and never had anyone come look at it. The “microvan” is awesome utility wise, mine is just a lemon.
@dboothsummers i don’t think carmax will give you $2000+ for the car, simply because it’s not something they can resell. I could be wrong, only one way to find out to go there and spend the 45 min getting it appraised. You say your car has both cosmetic and mechanical problems so the fact that it doesn’t look good in addition to having mechanical problems doesn’t help you.
You can try to find a dealer who REALLY needs to move new units and is willing to give you a little more for your trade-in but that’s a lot of legwork. It’s not impossible but lets say you find a dealer who is going to put you in a new car lease, it’s the end of the year, he is about to hit the number of cars he needs to sell to get a big bonus from the manufacturer at the end of the month, he will be willing to take a small loss for the bigger gain of getting the bonus. He won’t give you $4600 for your car but he might give you $500 more than what he would otherwise give.
A lot of “ifs” but not impossible. Good news is it’s a good time to try being that we’re at the end of the year. I’d try to wait until after xmas when the dealers are all in a frenzy trying to hit their numbers.
I still think staying under $200 is ambitious with rolling in negative equity. I think under $300 is doable.
I don’t think carmax will either, but what about a dealer? Can you tell I’ve never traded in something? I went to a dealer they looked at it for 5 minutes and told me $4000, but that was when I was at 98000 I thought it was kind of crazy…
@dboothsummers a dealer will only give you good money for a trade-in if he gets to move a new car at
a) a big profit
b) about to hit a bonus for selling x amount of cars per month.
there’s no other incentive for them to give you a good price.
I think general consensus is to go negotiate a new car lease first then bring up your trade-in. Don’t mention it on the front end. This will prevent the dealer from pricing your new lease with the trade in in mind.
So you can roughly work the numbers backwards, how much do you think a dealer is willing to pay for a car they have to recondition and sell between $5-$6k?
Eating 2k negative equity on a lease is already cramping your budget. On a 3 year lease, this would be 85+ a month, leaving you with 135 a month. For this to happen, you need to find an absolute bargain of a lease such as equinox.
Even an equinox would require you to pay for expensive comprehensive insurance!
May I suggest an alternative path? Get a gently used 2012+ prius. They retail for 10k and after absorbing the 2k equity, you should be on the hook for a 13k loan for 5 years at around 5%. Total monthly would be around 250. Advantage is you roll the 2k equity over a 5 year period instead of the lease.
Prius have good reliability. How to avoid a lemon? Take it to a mechanic pre inspection or have someone mechanically inclined with you at purchase… Buy from a reputable dealer, maybe even a toyota dealer. Check carfax. Check maintenance records.
The other thing I should say is that in June/July of 2019, my spouse will be finished with medical training and our family income will increase by a minimum of 4 fold. So we are low on cash right now and just need something to get us to the point where we can buy/lease something new. The plan has been to keep this current hunk of junk until mid-2019, but with every repair that plan seems less stable. Leasing for 30/36 months seemed to be the way to avoid repair costs until the point where I’ll be getting something different no matter what.
ok, Equinox would be a good bet but with no lease loyalty and 2k negative equity, you would pay minimum 250. Eg deal below. Note that this is 24 month lease, so may not work for you mileage and time wise
