Rear ended 2019 Lexus RX450H

But the upfronts they paid is gone-zo, and way more than the rent charge savings

The upfronts would be gone either way in a month, when the car would have either been turned in or purchased for RV.

The last payment has already been paid if the lease is current.

The OP has realized 36/36 of their savings.

But nonetheless “lease to buy” is usually a money-losing idea.

In normal times, this car would not have been totaled. Buying this out at residual after repairs is a tough call, diminished value, low miles and market conditions will probably cancel each other out. Bank will not negotiate a lower buyout with you, someone at the auction will pay decent money for it as the damage doesnt look that bad. Also, @legendsauto are advertising several gas RXs at $500-$600 band which is not too far from what they used to be before.

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RX used to be 12% off MSRP, can possibly get it in the high $300 range, now you will be hard pressed to find 5% off

Were these payments the norm though? I remember seeing RX’s mid to high 400s advertised mostly.

10-12% was the norm off. Payment can vary based on options but yeah if you got a base car with 7.5k miles you could easily be below 400 now you are high 500s.

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ask your insurance company to send you the check for the car and not the leasing company. i believe you can request it.

They have to pay off the bank first. Depends on how much the bank asks for - some will accept the current “payoff” and others will want a market value settlement from the insurance company. OP will get an excess but it really depends on whether or not there will be any excess, based on how much $$ the bank requires to settle.

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I have not see any leases in the $500-$600 band in the SF Bay Area. All the advertised prices I have seen are in the $900-$1200 range for 12K miles.

Hopefully Toyota agrees to this. Will have to wait and watch. But either way, looks like I might be in the market for a new car.

Still confused if I should want the car to be a total loss or not. If it is a total loss, hopefully there is some way I can get the excess. However based on the language in the contract it might be a little hard. I’ll try getting the insurance company to send me a check and then pay off Toyota.

If it isn’t a total loss, then I’ll look around on sites to see what the value of the car is and see if I can sell it to them for more than the RV. Any recommended sites where I can do this? Apart from carvana, carmax, algo?

Advertised where? The dealers website? 1.2k for an RX??

Yes. I asked for quotes from multiple dealers using TrueCar. Nothing less than 1k.

That isn’t an effective way to shop

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Nope. The only way to recoup a portion of that 8K is to pray insurance is willing to fix it, buy it out and sell it or someone able to circumvent Lexus lease terms. Equityhackr! Your next lease; if you do want to put money down the max I would go is 1st months payment + fees (TTL). I wouldn’t buy it with that hard of a hit.

OP’s lease ends this month. Their loss vs. putting nothing down as cap cost reduction, at this point, is probably minimal.

Oh that’s right he’s out of time. My wife lease got hit in Nov.'21, took 5 months to get the liftgate.

Then what would you suggest is the best way?

OP, I’m glad that you got out of that safely, which is most important. Totally sucks to have your plans wrecked especially in the current environment. I hope you’ll be able to get some of your equity. The hybrids are going for more than $4K above MSRP right now.

I am literally reviewing a RX one pay lease contract in these sections to see what my risks are.

Section 23 is the same and the words that jump out are “up to the amount that you owe us.” So the question becomes what would I owe them under a total loss?

Which brings us to the Early Termination sections. Here my contract differs from yours. The Early Termination Amount is “the difference, if any, between: the Adjusted Cap Cost; and the sum of (a) all depreciation and other amortized amounts through the date of early termination…, and (b) the Realized Value of the Vehicle.” (Realized Value is essentially my deductible plus the amount of the insurance claim, unless they agree to a higher amount).

It’s making my head explode to decipher that. :sweat_smile: I feel like I need to run a sensitivity analysis of different insurance payouts lol. Do we have any contract lawyers here?

So the insurance adjuster just got back to me with an an initial estimate of about 13K, but these are with all non-OEM parts. But they still want me to go into a body shop to get it checked out to get a firm estimate.

Any advice on if I should get it fixed with OEM parts and then try to sell it to Carvana/Vroom/ALgo etc or just give it up after fixing it up with non-OEM? Sorry I’m a complete newbie at this. The last car I had (Acura TSX), I kept for 10 years and 130K miles :open_mouth: