Question,
Why do some sellers ask for a down payment when trying to buyout their lease? and is it legit?
Positive equity?
Regain certain fees back?
there’s some specifics that i’m too lazy to get in to, but short version goes: that’s a red flag, stay away from sellers trying to get a down payment
Some think they have equity, many are just delusional. 8 out of 10 times the amount people ask for down payment makes no sense.
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Terrible answer.
It’s 100% legit as it’s legit to pull equity from a lease trade in from 1-2 years ago.
Also some people might put 10k down to lower payments. If they want 5 back nothing wrong with that. Do you due diligence for what the vehicle is worth in the current market.
Also best to use escrow.com or similar for large down payments.
If someone had 24 months left on a 7series for 300/mo and 8k down wouldn’t you do that?
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It’s just Econ 101: supply and demand. If the payment is below market pricing, someone will pay to get into it.
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Anyone can ask for whatever they want on SAL. Just remember that it’s probably negotiable and can’t hurt to ask.
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You are essentially looking at a used car when taking over a lease. I wouldn’t pay 800 /mo for a used 7 series. Here’s a random 7 series on SAL:
It’s effectively close to $1400 /mo when brokers here have new ones for $1100. Most leases on SAL are just awful, like $1700 for X5 or $1100 for X3. Most of the ones asking for payment don’t make sense even without it. It’s rare to find a lease where someone made a huge down payment to lower the monthly and is asking a small fraction to recoup something.
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another thing about the lease swapping that I found out was that it actually takes quite a bit of work to setup - the time to get all of the financial docs form bank, to pre authorize, to setting up some kind of escrow, and then the time for the leasing company to process. All in all, i think it would have taken me 4-8 weeks. And then you have to make sure that you trust the person that is transferring the lease to you and that once it does transfer over that they don’t just keep the car, or damage it since you will be responsible. I tried to complete several swaps from SAL, and they all failed due to shady sellers.
I ended buying, which hopefully will turn out to be a good decision 
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Agree they are so so bad on average.
My example was 630/mo. Bc that’s what I paid for my 2019 740 I got on a swap. Then I swapped it 6 months later for another $5000 down. Still was a better deal then the typical BMW buyer gets…
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