Want to Sell Your Lease? Here Are Your Options
There may come a time in your car lease when you decide that the vehicle isn’t for you anymore. Your needs might have changed, or perhaps you’re just looking for something a little different. Regardless of your reason, you may be looking for a way out that doesn’t involve paying the fees that come with breaking the lease.
You might have heard that you can sell your lease, but might be a little confused on what exactly that means. There are actually two different ways to sell your lease— and both of them are reasonable ways to get out of the agreement and pass the car onto someone else. In this article, we’re going to break down the two methods and what it means for you as a lessee. Let’s dive in!
Option #1: Buy out the lease and sell the car
The first option is to sell the car itself.
Of course, as a lessee, you don’t own the car. In order to sell a leased car, you will have to first buy it from the lessor. You can do this yourself, or you can arrange a buyer beforehand, leading to a process similar to trading in a leased car to a dealership.
Every lease agreement comes with a residual value defined at the time of signing. This is the value that the lessor expects the car to have after the lease term is over. If you want to buy the car before the end of the lease term, you will have to ask for a buyout price. This is the residual value from the lease contract plus any remaining balance on the lease and any fees the lessor finds appropriate.
FIND YOUR LEASE’S RESIDUAL VALUE
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Once you know how much it will cost to buy the car, you can find someone to sell the car to. If you have equity in the car, you can sell the car for more than you are paying to buy out the lease. If you just want out of your lease, you can sell the car for the exact buyout price and break even. Or if you just need to get out of those monthly payments quickly, you can sell for less than the buyout price. You’ll be out some cash, but you may be able to sell it faster by giving someone a good deal.
Whatever the situation, you should have an agreement in place to sell the car to a private buyer before buying out the lease. You will have to provide the cash to buy the car, so you’ll want to be sure you have a way to recoup the money.
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Option #2: Selling the lease itself
This option can be a more surefire way to get out of your lease, and it is much more viable early on in the lease term. However, it does come with some caveats.
Selling the lease itself is really just transferring a lease to someone else. If your car and its lease are desirable enough, you might be able to make some money off of it. To transfer your lease, you first have to make sure that it is allowed in your contract with the lessor. Some leases don’t allow transfers, while others allow them in exchange for a fee. If your lease does allow you to transfer the contract, then you can start looking for someone who wants to take over your lease.
You can try this on your own through local advertising such as social media posts on Facebook, Craigslist, etc., or you can use a website dedicated to matching lease sellers to lease buyers, such as Swapalease.com. This will allow you to advertise what you are selling directly to people who are specifically looking to buy it.
Once you have found someone interested in taking over your lease, you can negotiate the terms of the transfer. You can determine who will pay the transfer fee or if it will be split between the two of you. Depending on the value of the car, you can even try to wheel and deal your way into some extra cash if you both expect the car to have equity at the end of the lease or if your car is just particularly desirable or scarce in the market.
After you have reached an agreement with the buyer, they just have to apply for credit and be approved by the lessor to take over the lease payments, pay the transfer fees.
SELL YOUR LEASE FOR MAJOR MONEY
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