Pardon my ignorance as a noob, just saw this thread. I have a BMW lease ending in June and I was not aware I could sell the leased car rather than return it back to the dealer or buy it myself. Is there education I can read on how this is done?
Most finance companies will allow you to sell a leased vehicle to a 3rd party. The easiest thing to do is get an online quote from Carmax, Carvana, vroom, etc and contact BMW financial (if this is the bank you used to lease your car) and ask for your cost to buy the car or a 10 day payoff. This usually is the dealer cost plus sales tax so subtract whatever sales tax rate is for your state and it will give you an idea if you have equity or if it makes sense to pursue. If the numbers make sense, you arrange the sale and either pay negative equity to sell the car or sell the car and keep whatever the difference is between your payoff and what the dealer bought it for. From my understanding, BMWs usually don’t have equity in them, but the used car market is very hot right now.
Thank you for the info!
In order to end your lease early, you would either a) have someone else assume your lease or b) have someone buyout the lease.
Lease Assumption:
Many brands will allow you to transfer out of your lease and assign it to someone else after paying a lease transfer fee and submitting required documentation. Those brands include BMW, Lexus etc.
Some brands will not allow lease transfers at all such as Honda, Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, Hyundai etc.
A select few brands, such as Audi or Infiniti, allow lease transfers, but keep the original leasee liable. It is generally not recommended to do a transfer as you would remain liable for the car after transfer.
There are some other restrictions that can affect your ability to do a transfer such as remaining months on the lease and regional restrictions. It is best to check with your leasing company by calling them directly.
Once you decide you want to transfer out of your lease, you can post your car for free under LH’s private transfer section:
Alternatively, you can list your car for a fee with www.swapalease.com or www.leasetrader.com which are two large lease transfer marketplaces that have a large user base of people actively looking to assume leases.
Lease Buyout:
You can have a third party buyout the car. In order to do that, you would call your leasing company and get the current “dealer payoff quote” which is the amount of money needed right now to payoff your car which will satisfy your lease agreement. Once you have that number you can take your car to your local Carmax and see what they would offer to buy your car. If the amount is near or above your dealer payoff quote, then you can sell it to them and you would be out of the lease. Alternatively, you can get an online quote from vroom.com or carvana.com who will give you an instant online offer. If you accept the offer, they would come and pick up the car from you and pay you on the spot. Ideally you would get a quote from all sources as they may vary significantly. For more information, please see forum discussions:
For additional information, make sure to check out Leasehacking 101: How to End Your Lease Early
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Sold my 2019 Chrysler Pacifica Limited with 46k on it for $9k over payoff. Saw others on this thread getting pretty absurdly good offers so threw mine on their system to see what they came back with and was floored. Vroom, Algo etc were offering only about $3.5-4K over payoff so this was hard to pass up. One hour between inspection and paperwork and all is done!
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Was your lease with Chrysler capital? I was just turned away at Carmax after they called Chrysler and were told a third party buyout was not available due to “market conditions.”
Not a lease - this was a finance.
Very odd - just sold my Chrysler capital lease to carmax about 2 weeks ago with no issues.
I feel like my hands are tied. I called CCAP who gave me my payoff, and I have about $3.5K equity compared to the Carmax offer. I was expecting the dealer buyout to be different - was not expecting a flat out refusal. I the consumer cannot speak to the “dealer department”. 45 days left on lease.
Maybe it was too close to lease end?
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See if any local Chrysler dealers will buy it back.
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They probably realized they’ve been leaving money on the table but they don’t know how to get fair market value… they’re just throwing their hands up and saying whatever we get at auction is it.
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Sold my leased 2019 Volvo XC40 T5 R-Design financed through VCFS to CarMax for $5K over the payoff amount quoted by VCFS on 03/31/2021. Lease term date of 06/2021. Also received an appraisal from Carvana but Carvana sent an email to me stating: “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 (US Bank / Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp/ Infiniti / Ford / Ally Financial/ Volvo/ Lincoln/Tesla)'s policies, and this prevents us from being able to purchase leased vehicles from this provider.”
CarMax made the process easy. The CarMax rep was very knowledgeable about the VCFS process and knew that VCFS would need to talk to me to verify the information. VCFS would only provide my payoff amount to CarMax since CarMax was not a Volvo Retailer. CarMax provided me with a check for the difference once all the paperwork was complete.
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Well this is interesting… Which Carmax did you do this at?
I just sold my Grand Cherokee lease to Carmax today and it went smoothly, including the call to CCAP.
I’ve read elsewhere that Chrysler Capital requires a dealer sale to be greater than 60 days before lease end. Sounds like you missed the window by a couple weeks.
CarMax in Hartford CT
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We sold our truck to Carvana back in March and they were $1k more than Carnax. I just check the price on my Lexus and Carvana was $4000 more! I’m in Georgia if that matters.
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I checked my Mazda CX-5 and Carvana was about $3000 more than Carmax and the same for Vroom.
Chrysler Capital doesn’t let a 3rd party purchase a lease if it’s within 60-90 days (I forget the exact amount), happened to me when I had a Jeep Grand Cherokee with $2000 in equity I couldn’t use. Last Chrysler I will ever buy just for that reason.