Lease buyout fees

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ljwobker

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 16, 2012
Messages
68
Location
Raleigh, NC
So I've never bought out a lease before, but the current value of my 2019 is about 6-7k higher than the purchase option price, so it's financially insane not to extract that equity. I got a payoff quote from NMAC, but evidently the buyout *has* to be done through a dealer, and they're adding on all sorts of **** to the purchase. Is this normal? The quote I got was:
- the purchase price from the lease contract
- $350 added to that for the lease termination fee
- $700 added to that for doc fees (lord, deliver me from doc fees, right?)
- another $330 for "Accessories" -- what the hell is this?

is this normal? I realize most of the time that the value of the car is either less than the residual or close enough that none of this matters, but with the significant equity here I'm playing in a new sandbox, and so far it's full of ****.
 
You owe ONLY those fees that were listed in the lease documents, and ONLY those amounts. You should be able to take the car to a place like Carmax, and offer it to them to buy out the lease. Finally, you should be able to offer it to multiple Nissan dealers to buy. I "sold" my leased 2018 SL back to the dealer I leased it from for about $1500 in credits toward my next lease.
 
I can't say for sure, but Carmax has a list of manufacturers that they cannot buy out leased cars from. Nissan may be one of them.
They are getting crafty about wording and want the cars turned back in, or try to force you to lease another one from them.

I was surprised, I was going to sell them my leased car through Chrysler Capital, and they were fine with that. Ended up selling it to another car broker for $1500 more, so Carmax isn't the end-all do-all. But Carmax did have an extensive list of 'no-go' car financing companies.

The only way around this is to buy the car out directly from your lease source. If your state charges sales tax you'll owe that. In many cases, with today's used car values you'll likely still come out ahead. But the assumption that you can just sell the car to a third part is no longer true or valid.
 
CJBROWN said:
I can't say for sure, but Carmax has a list of manufacturers that they cannot buy out leased cars from. Nissan may be one of them.

Nissan is on this list from 2021
https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/lease-end-options-restrictions

Buy the lease, and then sell the car.
 
Or, if you would like to lease again, negotiate as if you are getting X amount of cash back, to be applied to the new lease. I got the Protection Package for my '21, and got the 3 year lease extended to 4 years, when I turned in my '18 SL. And that was with the dealer knowing that it had been hit and repaired.

I'm also considering an offer my housemate made me: I buy my '21 off lease, resell it, and she gives me the lease on her loaded '20 SV+, provided she gets to keep using it when I don't need or want to. I could then use whatever I got above the lease buyout towards buying the SV+ when the lease ends.
 
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