I leased a new 2022 Hyundai Sonata SE from a dealership about 2 hours from Dallas. I leased this vehicle in December of 2021, so I’ve had it for about a month and I just hit 1k miles on the vehicle. I have a payoff of $27,000 to “buy out” the lease, but funny (and sad) enough, I’m being told the only place I can sell it back to is a Hyundai dealership.
I have called around to roughly 10 dealerships in the metroplex, and the lowest offer I received was $20,000, and the highest I received was $24,500 – meaning, I will have to write them a check for $2,500 to pay the difference because I cannot sell to Carmax, Carvana, or Vroom. How is this even legal at this point? I have leased for years, and sold every single leased vehicle of mine; not to make $, because I never did, but more so because I did not like the vehicle I ended up leasing.
I received an offer today for $25,000 from Vroom, and asked if another dealership would beat the offer, but they said “you can’t even sell to Vroom, so no”. Funny enough, I talked to a rep at Hyundai Motor Finance in the leasing department, and she said they are NOT blocking Carmax, etc. from buying out their leases, but when you contact Carmax, they say they are NOT on their list of approved people to buy leases from. Can anyone assist with this, and help me figure out where to go from here? I am moving out of state, and will no longer need a vehicle, so I need to do something quickly.
So basically I’m screwed paying the difference to a Hyundai dealership, even though they are charging 1-5k as a “market adjustment” as well as thousands in dealer adds, but yet want to lowball me to sell directly to them because that’s the only place I’m forced and able to sell to. What a joke. This market is such bs and us little people still get screwed. I’m not trying to make money off the lease, just trying to get out of this vehicle but yet, they make thousands more and know they can sell this certified pre-owned, but are offering pennies to make more money.
The crazy thing about all of this, is that I can’t even get an accurate value on my car from TrueCar, KBB, etc. because my car is “too new” and the Sonata for 2022 doesn’t even pop up on there. Does anyone know when these values are usually populated? Because right now, I feel like these dealerships are just guessing in order to lowball me, because they literally have zero reports or accurate information in order to provide me an accurate # on the vehicle.
Estimates like that typically come from sales data in the wholesale market (actual auction sales). There may not be enough sales data for the algorithm to barf out a number.
Regardless, what TrueCar or KBB says the car is worth is meaningless if you have no buyers at that price.
The car is worth what you can get from an actual buyer.
Agree with @trism ; I believe most lease contracts are executed to near their full extent. Leasing just to sell shortly after leasing probably isn’t the best usage of your money in the first place, so I think it’s unfair to have an expectation that you should be able to sell it to anyone on a whim considering the contract is between you and the finance company.
More to your point, just sounds like Carmax and Carvana simply don’t want to buy a lease out from Hyundai financial for whatever reason. Just like you want the ability to sell your car when you want, businesses want the ability to choose who to buy from. Seems fair.
Why are you upset? That’s not your car and you have no say. You agreed to rent it from Hyundai for 3yrs, that’s all.
Think of it this way. If you were a landlord and rented out your house to someone and the next month they went behind your back and rented it to someone else for more than they agreed to rent from you and didn’t even tell you , would you have an issue with that?
I’m sure you wouldn’t let that go either.
If you really don’t like it and want out you can simply buy it out from Hyundai, pay your state sales tax, wait a month or so to get the title and the vehicle becomes yours. One you’re the owner, you can do whatever you want with it including selling it to whomever you want.
With Hyundai, it doesn’t even appear to be that as much as the 3rd party dealers are just saying “we don’t want to deal with Hyundai financial, so we aren’t interested in buying it”.
I don’t think that’s an accurate reflection of what’s actually going on there as much as people seeing 3rd party dealers saying “no Hyundai” and just assuming that it’s Hyundai financial saying no.
May or may not be, such is the risk with crowdsourced info.
As far as OP is concerned, the responses stand.
The ability for a consumer to sell a leased vehicle has been a courtesy and not a contractual right, and a car is only worth what an actual willing/able buyer will pay.
