Like a lot of you, I’m being forced to buy out my 2019 Accord 2.0T Sport lease and THEN sell to a third party buyer instead of selling to the 3rd party directly. My payoff from HFS is $20,7xx and I had quotes from CarMax and ALGo for $28k last month… then my neighbor’s teen daughter backed into my door . So now the car’s fixed & I’m gonna lose out on 7k profit because HFS locked out 3rd parties from buying on 7/14/2021.
I’m trying to minimize the loss, so I’m hoping you guys could share your private buyout & sell experiences so I can see if it seems worth the risk.
I live in MA, and they have electronic titles, but taxes and turnover time are going to be working against me. There will likely be a fee from whatever financial institution I borrow from, and interest for the month I’m trying to get this done. (Plus the market value could change, but we’re all at the mercy of that).
Are there any missing costs I haven’t thought of? Is there a grace/exempt period for buying & selling so there isn’t a double hit for sales tax? I’ve heard CA has that, but CA rules don’t usually apply to the rest of the world.
I would look into a trade-in, where you may find a dealership that has a Honda relationship, or work with a wholesaler who can sell the vehicle before the title and registration work is complete. In both cases, if you acquire the new vehicle from same source, you will realize a tax credit.
I actually ran a second estimate with Carmax after going thru insurance and told them it was in an accident. They still valued it at 28k. Crazy times. Seems these guys are still throwing money at whoever can sell them a decent car.
I’m really trying to stay open to whatever I can get a good deal on. I’ve seen some good TLX deals on the forums and I’m open to a small suv also, so Acura could be a player if they can give good value for the Honda affiliation. Thanks
@max_g …not the reply I was expecting from a trusted Hackr. Usually you guys are really helpful. If you had 7k ripped out of your driveway, I wouldn’t be throwing darts at you. Where’s the LH camaraderie!? But hey, maybe you spilled your ice cream on the floor or your wife pissed you off right before you replied. I won’t hate.
He makes a valid point. No one is forcing you to do anything. These are unprecedented times. Under normal circumstances, you’d have little to no or negative equity. There is a certain sense of entitlement in your original post, and the forum has been inundated with threads like this for the past few months. I think people are starting to tire of these threads. It is what it is. HFS owns your vehicle.
Come on in here fella. I think you guys need a hug. You may be sick of the posts, and I get it. But HFS is straight up muscling out their consumers and the smaller used car businesses. Monopolizing their market because they can (for some reason). Because, America.
Changing the rules (about who can buy the car) AFTER we sign a leasing contract is bogus, and I’m having a hard time seeing a sense of entitlement for something I already have. The fact is that the equity IS there. Also the fact that anybody on this site couldn’t see this coming in the leasing market where half the country is no longer driving to work for 1.5 years blows my mind.
I worked my a$@ off to get the deal I got. Now I’m going to sell the car like I planned & I’m looking for other people that are in the same boat as me. That’s what the forums are for. I totally get that you’re sick of these posts, you can much more easily ignore them than to agree with a guy who says I’m “whining” when I’m looking for advice.
OP, you want to game the system and make profit, that’s totally up to you. HFS just made things tilt in their favor because legally it’s their vehicle and they have a vested interest to support their dealers in these unprecedented times.
Regardless, I’d still buyout the lease, keep it or sell it. These vehicles will hold their value and prices of cars are only going up … at least for the next couple of years.
Wondering why you didn’t sell it a month ago when you got offers from Carmax and Algo?
If you had been paying any attention to this forum, how could you not see it coming that HFS would stop 3rd party sales?
I sold my Honda Pilot quickly to Carvana because this forum educated me that 3rd party sales would be coming to an end.
It looks like you missed your window of opportunity to make money on something that was not yours and you want to blame everyone but yourself.
@mllcb42 I do usually agree with what you post, and this one is no different. It will never say in any contract that the lessor is obligated to sell to anyone except the lessee. Which is why I can’t do anything about it except buy out & sell the lease. They can’t take the car itself away from me (unless the government decides to, which actually IS written into the contract) so technically, you’re right that I don’t own the equity until I ink my name on the paper.
It’s also right on @ilike2breakthngs that HFS (lawyers) are using any advantage they can get to shove the money & cars over toward Acura & Honda dealers because they’re losing it and them.
They’re taking the money directly out of the consumer’s pocket to mitigate their losses. There’s no sugar-coating that.
Also, I think @FlHackr is missing the side note here that my MF neighbor’s 16 yr old daughter smashed my car when I was literally hours away from putting 7k toward my kids’ college fund. (You clearly didn’t finish reading in the original post). Any of y’all would be heated if that happened to you… though still - not the point of the post.
End: It’s clear I’ll need to buy & sell the car. Thanks for reinforcing that. Oh, and confirmed that CA is the only state that let’s you avoid double sales tax hits.
But they aren’t taking money out of your pocket. They’re just limiting your ability to take their money.
The issue in this debate (and not with you specifically, but with this topic when it gets posted again seemingly every 20 minutes) is that people are getting annoyed that they can’t make money by selling something that isn’t theirs. Yes, it’s annoying that in the past some banks allowed this and now they don’t, but it never was “your” equity. Yesterday’s good fortune doesn’t mean anyone was entitled to it now or then.
Rather than be upset that you’ve “lost” $7k that was never yours, think how fortuitous it is that you have a contract that gives you the ability to purchase the car for significantly under market value. That is something you are entitled to.
They own the car, so technically you’re trying to sell their property off can keep the profit. They are just limiting your ability to do that by making you buy the car then sell it off.
They are protecting their asset, remember they are a business and they are in the business of making money, so they are just enforcing their contract that if you want the equity you should e to buy it from them.
Seems like a very valid question given what’s going on in the market
For anyone with equity in their leases, I would try to line up a buyer before lease end, run the buyout through a dealer, and have the new owner give you the difference of buyout and sale price.
No tax on your part
Dealer will handle title and dmv
Dealer will issue temp plate (doesn’t apply to you in MA)
No disposition fee for you
Some fees will be built in but worth it I think
This may be hard ask for some
Brokers have an easier time with this because of the network we have so ymmv
Sales tax on my purchase from HFS and then sales tax on the purchase by the third party from me. Both would bring down the overall value of potential equity of the car.
. So now the car’s fixed & I’m gonna lose out on 7k profit because HFS locked out 3rd parties from buying on 7/14/2021.
