A year or so ago, I did a dumb thing–I leased a car and agreed to a payment that in retrospect I think is too high. Even though I like the car a lot, I don’t want to end up paying a big pile of money for the privilege of giving the car back at the end of the lease term. Also, right after I leased the car my company got acquired and because the new company is a lot farther from home than the old one, my commute means I’m going to blow away the lease’s mileage allowance in short order.
I know it’s very difficult to get out of a lease, but does anybody have any info about doing some sort of refinance to turn the lease into a purchase? I don’t mind the payment I have now, but I’d really prefer that I be building some equity in the car with it.
I’m willing to accept a reasonable penalty for my stupidity.
Is it possible to do this? Pointers? Suggestions? Things to look out for?
“what is the ‘buyout’ amount on my car at the end of my lease(residua amount)?”
-" what is the total amount of lease payments left?"
add the two and you have the purchase price you have to pay to buy it right now…then, call the dealer that sold you said vehicle and negotiate the final purchase price.
For example: lease a $25,000 auto…after say 39 months of a lease, the buyout will be something like 12,000 bucks. At the end of the lease, you could buy it for 12 g’s.
Mid lease, you owe the buyout (residual value) and remaining lease payments (maybe not the interest). This is all negotiable. Many dealers would be happy to work something out.
I’ve done it before, and i’m about to do it again.
Heck, in the case of repectable Ford Credit and GMAC, you don’t have to worry about the dealer or any of that math nonsense. Call them up, and say hey, if I want to buy my vehicle before such-and-such date, how much does I gots to pay ya? They’ll tell you right away. Send 'em a check, and its yours. Try www.peoplefirst.com if you don’t have the cash and need the check (I work for the manufacturing division of a competitor and peoplefirst couldn’t be beat).
Thanks a lot for the tips–it’s nice to know that this is possible. I’ll check into these options.
Thanks too, Balthisar, for the reminder about Peoplefirst. The spouse used them when he was looking for a motorcycle loan, and they got him a great rate.
Better still…just say “NO” to leases! Isn’t it suspicious that the salesmen want to talk lease when YOU want to talk BUY??? This was a red flag for me. A salesmen who didn’t want to talk SELL? What’s the catch? The catch is that the dealerships make a ton of money off the leases and re-financing when you can’t buy the car outright. Not only that, but you can get burned by a sky-high interest rate when re-financing unless your credit is good enough. Without being able to bring in your OWN financing, or at least stating that you are getting your own financing, you could really get trapped! - Jinx
Jinx, you’re laboring under a misconception. At the time, I was talking lease. We’ve leased cars before and have been fine with it–it’s just that in this case it didn’t work out quite the way I wanted it. I can’t blame this bit of stupidity on anybody but me.
There are sites online that specialise in helping people get out of lease arrangements. Takemypayments has some advice. The other big one is Swapalease . Good luck.
