I leased a 2016 Corolla LE in January for a 36 month lease for 230/month in Fl. Our family has outgrown the car and literally unusable for our needs. I don’t know what we were thinking when we decided to pull the trigger and it also turns out we could have done better with the monthly rate.
I am asking around dealerships for a trade but no one is showing interest Including Toyota. What options do we have ? I am even willing to lose some money but either sell or, swap. I registered in lease trader but not yet bought their package – is that a recommended avenue for my situation,?
i can only recommend swapalease. I went with their cheapest plan which was $100 and i got someone to take my car within days. I had previously try to list on forums, craigslist etc with almost no interest and then listed on swapalease and that worked really well for me personally.
There are some factors to consider such as the other corollas on the site. If your car is significantly more $ than others then you might have to offer an “incentive” for someone to take your car. If you’re short on miles or have other terms of your lease that are worse than average then that could be an issue etc.
Also I don’t know about Toyota, but Lexus is notorious for being slow in handling a lease assumption. You can call swapalease customer service and ask how long/difficult the process is with Toyota, i would assume it’s similar so take that into account.
Your other options incl selling the car and possibly taking a loss if the selling price is less than payoff or to trade it in for another car and roll the negative equity into the new payment.
As far as “calling around” to see who is interested in trade-in, that’s not how it works. Dealers trade-in a car to sell you a new one, so once you have a deal on a new lease negotiated then you bring up your trade-in. They will want to make the deal work and will want to trade-in your car. Now at what price is a different story.
Lastly you can always take it to carmax and see what they offer you and compare that to the lease payoff. If it’s close then you can just sell to carmax and avoid a lot of hassle. Most of the times carmax doesn’t work out but in some instances it does so all you lose is an hr of your time to find out.
Like others already said - Swapalease or get some cashflow by renting it on Turo https://turo.com/referral?code=23806rgqjVl
Signup- it’s free and you get rental credits for first timers. They cover your 100% as well.
Another option that you’ve already mentioned is go back to the same dealer and plan on getting another vehicle from them- maybe they’ll give you a better offer. Take that offer and shop around other Toyota Dealerships- it’s year end, perhaps you’ll suffer a less of the net cost.
