Better yet, cash the check, pull out a stack of 450 $20 bills and sleep on that.
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I think you got my priorities correctly. It’s not about “making $9K”, that’s not a priority. It’s really the decision between buying out the existing GLC or leasing new. I think in my case (where an extra $20-50/month doesn’t really matter), we’d just lease a new GLC.
It’s unclear to me that the market will stabilize in a year, so it may be a case where the current GLC is out of warranty, supply chain is still disrupted, who knows what other virus will land here, etc. But I think in 3 years things will be stable.
So yeah, this is less about “a solid financial decision” I guess.
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You should really verify first if MB allows 3rd party dealer buyout anymore. When I tried to sell my MB last month Vroom came back after a week saying that they won’t buy MB lease. I got email from Carvana recently that they stopped buying MB lease. Your only options will be to sell to a MB dealer or buy yourself and sell within 10 days to avoid tax. In any case the payout can be vastly different. I saw the offer fluctuating by $2.5k within a week.
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MB stopped fully on 9/1. The 3rd parties just started earlier because they knew what a pain it would be if something delays it.
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Is that confirmed by MBFS? I got this email from Carvana which did it state anything about MB stopped selling to 3rd party:
“ Thank you for taking the time to submit your vehicle for a value with Carvana. At this time, we are not able to move forward with purchasing your leased vehicle as Carvana’s policy does not align with Mercedes-Benz policies, and this prevents us from being able to purchase leased vehicles from this provider.
We do apologize for any inconveniences at this time and hope that you’ll consider Carvana in the future for any vehicle purchases and/or sales.”
If it’s confirmed by MB then this wiki needs to updated: List of Lenders that Charge Third-Party Buyers a Higher Payoff - #201 by forbs.
I don’t know if there is an ‘official’ but this post says 9/1
I’m not sure your question has anything to do with the brand of your car. It is simply should you buy out your current lease or should you lease a new car - isn’t it? I don’t think anyone knows when the market will stabilize - I had an analyst tell me it would be Q1 2022 and I was on a call with an electronics company who said 2023 so who knows.
I am in a similar situation and here is how I am analyzing it. In a normal market the lease would end, you would pay disposition fee, put down $3k and start another lease. There are many data points on this site, including your own, to see where leases were trading previously. The question is are current leases >$250 ($9000equity/36) more than yours and or previous deals listed here. I would say more than likely not. Using X3M40I (suv I’m analyzing) as an example, they were trading here via broker in Nov 2020 for $610-650 a month depending on build and MSDs. From what I see now I can order a LCI via broker for about $750-780 a month again non loaded and MSD dependent. So $150ish a month more over 36 months is $5k. I’m hoping to net $7k from my Jeep buyout and flip. So the effective payment would be roughly $580. In my case in $30 ahead a month and in a way nicer vehicle. Aren’t vacuums great!
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I am in the same situation but with an x5. I’m going to order a wrangler 4xe which is the only solid deal right now. Sure, not a luxury car, but still a solid SUV to drive around until the market cools. It’ll be easy to get out of the lease at that point via swap or equity.
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No that’s not how it works.
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Highly reminiscent of driving my Mini Clubman (which Mini gets no love here) in that driving the 4xE is very unique. Like the Mini, the cockpit, seating position, and driving characteristics are special and satisfying, so much so that getting back into a ‘normal’ car/truck feels very underwhelming. You may just want to keep the Jeep.
I was in a similar situation with positive equity.
Ended up selling the atlas for 6600 more than the payoff.
We wanted to move back to Audi (had a q7 before the atlas) for the q8 but it didn’t lease well. I could have put the 6600 into the q8 to get the monthly down but I couldn’t accept paying that much total for a car without any discount or incentives.
Took a look at the xc90 t8, loved it, and was able to get 8% of before all the incentives offered. We got a lot more features than we would in a stock q8 premium. And I have an extra 6600 in the bank.
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How’s the lease on the xc90?
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Well the math changed. Since we apparently can’t do 3rd-party buyout anymore after 9/1, CarMax and others won’t buy it and dealer is obviously offering less now. So my $9K in profit became $6K. 
Besides, that’s the number they quote on the phone. I’m sure they’ll find “something” wrong when I’m actually there and the profit will drop even more.
I wonder if it makes more financial sense to just buy out the GLC outright, suck up the sales tax, and then sell it private-party once I get the title.
So here’s my latest thinking, given that I want to end up in a new GLC (and not another brand), and can stomach an extra grand or two out of pocket for peace of mind.
Given that I can’t sell to a third-party because of MBFS rules and the dealers will obviously screw me over when I trade in the current GLC (I called a few and they all said something along the lines of “Oh, CarMax is offering you $X but you can’t sell to them. The most we can do is $X-$4K”). I’m sure this price will only go down when I show up at the dealer asking them to accept my current car at whatever price they seem fit - that doesn’t sound good to me.
I think I’ll buy out the car now and secure a new one at the best pricing possible. It will still take 1-2 months for the new car to arrive by boat because nobody has inventory here. During that 1-2 months, I expect the title will arrive which will make it possible to sell to CarMax/Carvana/Vroom, etc. More options —> better price for me.
I “lose” the sales tax, but I don’t see supply getting better in the next few months anyway, and this also means that it’s only 1 negotiation to have with the dealers and not 2…
So some money lost, but this also sounds more predictable to me than hoping that the dealer won’t screw me over on the pricing of the old car.
The reason I don’t want to keep it is because I’m not sure that the supply issues will get better over the next year (some inside knowledge here that’s a subject for a different thread), and I don’t want to get stuck with a car out of warranty.
What does collective wisdom say?
Have you read?
I have. I think the situation was different a couple months ago when it was just as easy to sell to Mercedes dealer or to CarMax (when I inquired at AutoNation a month ago, they said “show us the CarMax price, we will meet it or beat it). Now that you can ONLY sell leased Mercedes to Mercedes, dealers would be stupid not to take advantage of that. Don’t you think?
You just say, I’ll buy it and sell it to them. I’ll lose 2k but it’s better than YOUR price right?
yeah true. I’m getting like 33k average for a buyout and my residual is approx $23.5k. Sounds like a slam dunk but I believe I could get more for the car. I’m wondering if US Bank allows dealer buy outs from a leased car or do I need to purchase first. If I purchase first then I waste the money in sales tax thus netting me less money because of the tax. This is in CA of course. Or does DMV refund you the tax if someone buys it from you after you paid the tax?