No, I didn’t. The Nissan dealership manager told me, “If I did it, you would not have to pay taxes. I would ground the lease and do a dealership purchase… you would not have to do a thing. I would be able to give you a check for $1000 and you would be done. Please let me know.”
And what he described is exactly what happened. The whole thing took 15 minutes, including getting to and from the dealership.
I’m sure he turned around and sold it and he and I probably both ended up profiting a bit.
Are you sure you can’t buy it directly from NMAC?
Florida is the only state I know of where you can’t
I remember a few years ago my boss wanted to buy his Altima lease (he liked the car) and it was a pain in the ass for him. He’s on LI in NY and had to go thru his local dealer and they made him pay an additional fee for buying it.
This must’ve been back in 2016/2017 or so. All I remember was him sitting next to me in the office on countless calls with NMAC and the dealership.
He didn’t even want to flip it. He just wanted to buy it out and have his wife drive it.
No… apparently you have to do the transaction through a Nissan dealership (their fee varies depending on where you go. I had one quote me $275 and another quote me $900 which is crazy). I attached my buyout quote letter where it sort of explains it but I still don’t fully understand it.
Thank you, that’s good to know. That’s what I’m going to do later this week then, have a Nissan dealership buy it out, write me check for the difference and then be done with all this Nissan nonsense! It won’t be anywhere close to $5k, but now that that’s no longer an option, I’ll be happy to walk away from Nissan with my liability waived and a little extra money in my pocket
I will also add that at least in my experience, I didn’t take issue with carmax. They were just as confused as I was in the beginning and then they were scrambling to try to help me get the answers I needed from their corporate titling office and Nissan. My local office wasn’t very helpful because they were sort of the last to know about the issue with the third party buyouts, but I talked to the same couple reps at CarMax’s corporate line a handful of times last week and they were doing their absolute best to try to help me. Obviously things didn’t shake out in my favor, but it wasn’t for lack of their effort or mine. So I can’t really blame anyone but Nissan. NMAC really should have been more transparent and open about their policy change ahead of time and let all of the dealerships they have previously done business with know the full story instead of giving their lease customers and carmax the runaround.
Yeah, the CarMax national customer service people were helpful (I ended up messaging them on Facebook which I found to be faster/more efficient than calling and waiting on hold) but my local people here in Omaha were-less-than awesome. Well, really just one guy. After Nissan told me they WOULD allow it, I called Carmax and the guy said Carmax couldn’t buy it. I told him I just talked to Nissan and to please call and check with them, and he said “I don’t have the staff for that” and refused to help me. He just kept repeating “Sir there’s nothing I can do for you” and then he said “I’m not going around in circles with you” and he hung up on me while I was in mid-sentence. A little bit later someone else from Carmax called me (presumably hang-up-guy’s manager) and he echoed what hang-up-guy said, but at least Second Guy called Nissan and was given an answer to support Carmax’s position. It was at that point that I realized NMAC had its collective head up its collective @$$ and I gave up and went with the local dealership.
But yeah I should have probably pointed out that hang-up guy’s customer service was total unacceptable garbage but I was too tired of dealing with it at that point.
Yeah, that totally makes sense. Thankfully I didn’t have that experience, but that was mostly because the local carmax (Warwick, RI) just didn’t bother to return my calls about it most of the week. Haha. So that’s why I ended up just calling carmax’s corporate since they were more helpful. By the time I got the go ahead from Nissan, Carmax’s corporate had sent out a flash email saying that they weren’t allowed to do any more Nissan lease buyouts from that point forward. When one of the local sales manager finally got all that information passed down he did call me and apologize for all the confusion. It sounded like it had kind of been a nightmare for them too last week. The sales manager said carmax was already having to deal with situations with people who had already sold them their cars but that Nissan was already refusing to honor their checks for, so I understand why they halted them altogether. Seemed like a total shitshow for us as customers and for carmax. Would have been really nice if Nissan offered some transparency ahead of time regarding their policy change. But I’m glad you were able to find a local dealership to at least get a little bit of that equity from 
I just had a Nissan dealership I called tell me I don’t own the car, Nissan does, and to cut me a check for the difference between what they would buy it for and what I owe on it “would be completely unethical” and “is something they’ve never heard of in [their] 20 years in the industry”. Like, no shit I don’t own the car, but they’ve really never heard of a lease buyout before? I told them they should probably do some research on it then. I swear this process is frying my brain. Lol
Lolwhat!?
By that logic, I can’t sell my house either, because I have a mortgage! Christ. I don’t have enough faces or palms to deal with idiots. Good luck and let us know what happens when you (hopefully) find a Nissan dealership that will work with you.
Well, by that logic, you can’t sell the house you’re renting, because you have a lease.
Let’s at least compare apples to apples.
Yeah, I suppose that makes more sense.
A lot of people are in uncharted territory. They’ve never dealt with this stuff before.
For sure. I just wish that people would be willing to admit that they’re not sure about something and be willing to look into it rather than just telling you you’re flat out wrong. NMAC told me directly that of course a Nissan dealership could do a buyout, and I had 3 dealerships offer to do so. So for the dealership closest to me to tell me so rudely that it’s absolutely unethical and not something dealerships do is kind of silly. If there’s doesn’t, that’s totally fine, I can drive a bit further to one of the other dealerships, but them waiving their 20 years in the industry in my face when I simply tried to explain the process to them and that I had already gotten the green light from Nissan financial directly (who my contract is with) was kind of unnecessary. I simply said, I understand if you’re not interested in the car, but yes, many dealerships do lease buyouts, until last week all kinds of dealers other than Nissan were able to do these transactions, but now that NMAC has changed their policy only a Nissan dealership dealership can do the buyout. I encouraged her to just do a little research into it or confirm with Nissan financial so that even if their dealership doesn’t do buyouts, they understand the process and that other dealerships do. She scoffed and told me she didn’t need to do the research, because her experience said otherwise.
But yeah, maybe the mortgage analogy isn’t perfect, but I do think it’s honestly closer than the rental analogy. The mortgage lender holds your deed/property title and if you sell the house you pay them what’s left on the mortgage and then pocket the difference (assuming the house sells at a profit). NMAC technically owns the car, just like a bank or
mortgage lender technically owns your house until you paid it off. But the car lease financer specifically has a buyout option, that you can walk away with the car and it’s title if you settle up on that, just like if you paid off your mortgage (or someone else did by buying it). There’s definitely not a buyout option included in most home rental lease agreements. Lol. I mean we’re splitting hairs here and neither analogy is perfect, but having the option to buy the car/home outright definitely makes a difference
There are tons of leases out there with purchase options on them. They also have specific buy out conditions that allow you, as the person leasing the vehicle, to buy out the lease.
A house with a mortgage is just like a financed vehicle purchase.
A lease that you then buy out is two separate transactions. First you rent it and then you purchase it. It’s not a “I paid it off and now I’ve completed the primary transaction”.
3rd party buy outs are great and all, but it’s really in everyone’s best interest to have a solid understanding of the contract that they’ve agreed to and what that entitles them to. The fact that any bank allows you to sell their asset in a way that skirts your tax liability and pocket the equity is insanity. It works out in our favor, but it’s nuts that anyone allows it.
Yeah that totally makes sense. I fortunately live in a tax free state so that didn’t considerably factor into my concern about it. But I also sort of assumed that if I did live in a taxable state, I’d have to claim that payout as like a capital gain or something on my taxes. But yeah, it is an interesting loophole for sure. And obviously none of this is explicitly even covered on the contract (would probably be more helpful if it was. Haha)
Well, there’s sales tax required when you buy out the vehicle (unless you’re in a state that doesn’t tax vehicles) and then there’s the capital gains discussion, which would only apply if you were actually making a profit (rather than just recouping some of your cost) or if you had written off the lease and were doing income recapture. Of course, in the capital gains scenario, your state is irrelevant as there’s still federal income tax to pay.
And this is all covered in your contract. It tells you your options for buying out the vehicle. The problem is that people want to make up things that aren’t in the contract and decide that they can extend their options, as spelled out in the contract, to others.
Right that makes sense. And yeah, that’s totally fair. I never would have assumed that someone else buying out the car was an option at all until a number of dealerships (including carmax and then Nissan) explained the process to me. Basically it’s not part of the contract or lease agreement, it just sounds like finance companies used to offer the extra option as a courtesy because it was in their best interest in getting their cars sold. But now that the tables have turned and dealers and customers alike are profiting more off of these transactions, it’s no longer in their best interest.
Exactly. The contract allows them to sell at their discretion as a courtesy. When it doesn’t make sense for them to do so, they have no reason to do so.
