Tips for Buying Out Your Car Lease
You’ve come to the end of your lease and you like you car enough you want to keep it in the driveway. Before you jump into buying it out, there is some research you should be doing as it’s right up there on the level of buying a used car.
First and foremost, you should know the full cost of buying out your car lease. On the lease contract you signed, there should be a “purchase option price” – this should tell you the buyout cost. This fee is usually a set value from the leasing company that takes into account the value of the car at lease-end and of course a 300-500 dollar purchasing fee. When you signed on the dotted line, your monthly payments were calculated as the difference between the vehicle’s sticker price and its estimated value at the end of the lease, plus a monthly financing fee. The estimated value at the end of the lease is what they call residual value. It is the expected depreciation – or loss in value – of the vehicle over the scheduled-lease period. For example, a car with a 50% residual percentage and a sticker price of $40,000 will have an estimated $20,000 value at the end of the lease.
This should give you an idea as to the cost of buying your car at lease end. Now you should work on figuring out the actual value, or market value, of your car. In order to determine how much your car is worth in the market, you’re going to have to do some research. Compare what different dealers are listing your vehicle at. Be sure to take mileage and condition into account when you do so. You can also make use of the Internet using sites like Edmonds.com, Cars.com or Kelly Blue Book for easy pricing research. Gleaning pricing information from various sources should give you a fair estimate of your vehicle’s retail value.
All that’s left to do now is compare your researched value, and the residual value. If the residual value is lower than the actual retail value, than you’re into a winner. Unfortunately this is unlikely as a car coming off a lease usually has a fairly high residual value.
Car leasing buyout tips.
Don’t despair though. Leasing companies know as much that residual values on their vehicles are greater than their market value and as such are always on the look out for offers. You can knock down on the price of your leased vehicle with some smooth negotiating tactics. Put forward a price that is below your actual target and negotiate hard until you wind up near that figure. Hopefully, these car buying tips will help you succeed in this.