Yeah for CarMax to cover lease buyout early I think you would need to be in a pretty select number of non luxury SUVs, certain Honda/Toyota products which seem to have otherworldly residual values or have bought the vehicle with a unicorn deal.
Almost never gonna happen with a Volvo or Infiniti.
There’s talk in the forum the quantifies the wear & tear damage that each captive waives in their base lease agreement, or, the value of the additional protection packages? I’ve been unable to find the former, but perhaps I’m not using the correct search terms.
prob not listed in one post with all the captives but discussed individually. Agree with whoever posted above that one wiki would be helpful.
However, if one drives roughly 7,000 miles annually, the low mileage adds just enough value to make the thing work out.
We both work within 7 miles of home and work from home frequently. We just don’t drive a ton, so that’s part of the secret recipe, too.
i dont know, if you look at some of these carvana and vroom offers, it shows the “bonus” for having low milage in the offer, it’s usually like $1000-$1500, it’s not insignificant but not earth shattering either.
if you’re a good lease hackr, you pay so little that you’ll never be able to get an offer from carmax even close to buyout (unless it’s right in the beginning of the lease where you had $10k in rebates etc). To me that’s an indication you did well on your lease.
This was my case. Two weeks into my lease back in 2016 I had an accident (not that it matters but I was not at fault). Because of this Carmax’s offer was almost 4K under the buyout amount by the time the lease was done and a couple of dealers didn’t really want to buy the vehicle for the same reason.
yea carmax doesn’t sell accident cars on their lot, if they bought it from you it’s to sell it at auction, so they will lower their offer.
CarMax or others like auction direct will buy some really banged up cars.
We were 32 months in a 36 month lease on a Honda Odyssey. Way over on miles(15k), cracked windshield, kids hand used markers on back of second row chairs, both rear fenders and bumper had parking lot scrapes.
I had ended up winning an award that came with use another vehicle for a year and 20k miles and needed to get rid of the Odyssey ASAP.
Auction Direct offered me within $50 of my payoff and that ride was SOLD!
Saved me over $1000 on last 3/4 payments and any hassle about getting things fixed or dealing with lease turn in.
If I recall Honda/Acura waive $1000 total but couldn’t be more than $500 for any one item.
Do you work in clickbait advertising? If not, you should.
Yes, all lease contracts are not created equal.
All leases through CULA credit unions (check cula.com for the list) come with $1k excess wear and tear waivers and gap at no charge. They also are super simple to trade out early at any dealer (same buyout price for the dealer or the customer) and we work nicely with Swapalease.
I guess I’ll take that as a compliment 
Wouldn’t it would be awesome to get a wiki going that lists all the waivers, gap insurance, dispo waiver, etc, for each manufacturer? A tremendous amount of time is spent in this forum discussing front-end lease costs to the point that it eclipses back-end cost considerations.
That sweet lease you scored may not seem so sweet 3 years later.
If we can collectively shed some light on this topic, then I am very proud of my “clickbait”.
Rule of thumb is most are lenient, with the exception of US Bank. All the horror stories you here on here are people that trash their cars or don’t get major body damage repaired. The captives are pretty clear on what is chargeable and send you a nice package and card showing what’s chargeable. Even if I had knowledge of waiver limits prior to doing a deal it wouldn’t sway me. I’m a cheapskate and chase the payment. The larger waivers seem to be on brands that farm out there finance arm to Chase etc.
IF you remain loyal to them and get another Infiniti/Nissan. If not, no waiver.
Take care of your car…there isn’t a problem. That’s a bit silly to lease from a certain brand just because they may offer a waiver for damage, you may not even need.
I’m guessing you don’t live in an urban area where there is minimal space between parking stalls and folks ding your door when they open their car. Or they scratch your bumper when they desperately try to parallel park their Escalade into a tiny space.
Yes, i should have specified.
Somewhat correct…I work in an urban area, but live in the suburbs, where people are just as eager to park as close to your car as possible, and see if they can still swing their door open as far as they can.
I got up to $7,500 in wear & tear covered with a $995 wear and tear addendum when I leased my 2015 Infiniti Q50
Based on the tires alone and the fact that I live and park on streets in L.A. I think it was a good move.
I had the excess wear & tear addendum on a VW I had in the past and literally two days before I returned it somebody sideswiped the driver’s side and it was all covered.
I think it is a good move to get it if the cost isn’t too high and can be spread out through the lease term.
If you’re not risk adverse, perhaps. OTOH, I’ve leased countless cars over the last 20 years, have never NOT needed tires from a pure safety standpoint over the term of the lease before turning it in, and have never had a major event where I would’ve used the extra coverage. I’m way ahead of the game at this point should I have to pay for something out of pocket vs taking the coverage. If the damage is major enough, I’ll go through my insurance. That’s what I pay for, and that’s what it’s there for. Sure, my rates may go up, but not enough to justify me paying for the addendum, especially when considering how much I’ve saved by not buying it over 20 years. While I don’t live in a city as large as LA, there’s still a couple million people here, so I’m not in an area where I’m not at risk of a ding or dent either.
Just my $.02