Leased Vehicle Return and Re-purchase

Question

My lease term is coming up in a few months. The car has around 20k miles, whereas the lease was for 36k miles.

I like the car, and I intend to buy it, however the lease end purchase price is a bit high than current KBB.

I have also moved to a different state. Driving the car to the dealership where I purchased is not an option.

In your experience, do banks/dealers negotiate over the lease end price, if I tell them that I intend to return the car? The bank doesn't know about the low mileage yet.

Note: GM is the manufacturer

Answer 1

Presumably, you would be negotiating with a dealership not with the bank that provided the money to you. You could try negotiating but, really, if the car has less miles on it than the lease buy out price assumes there's no reason for the dealership to negotiate downward.

But it never hurts to try, maybe the dealership has a glut of used cars in your model and doesn't want to take on another one. Maybe you could get them to throw in an extended warranty at no cost if you proceed with the buy out.

Answer 2

I just went through this process and can share my experience. I was in the same boat as you: Car had lower miles than what was leased for, I intended to buy it, the buyout option stipulated in the lease agreement was higher than the KBB value.

They would not negotiate at all with the buyout amount. I tried negotiating with the dealer and the vehicle manufacturer (VW in this case). I thought I had a pretty strong argument too given everything that had recently happened with VW, but they wouldn't budge. Good luck!

Answer 3

If you have taken good care of the vehicle, it has no noticeable chips, stains, scratches, etc., then one of the other people commenting is correct that the dealer has little reason or motivation to negotiate too much with you, especially if the vehicle is well below the allowed mileage. They are likely going to be able to sell it at a premium any, regardless of whether it's to you or to someone else.

That being said, the answer is already "no" if you don't try, so you don't stand to lose anything by asking for a better price. If you're somehow stuck on the idea that your price has to be anywhere near KBB's valuation, that's just not going to happen. There is so much subjectivity on how those numbers are arrived at to begin with. KBB is a good resource as a baseline idea for a price, but you're never going to get a KBB valuation on a used car.

Remember that the dealer will be going over the car with a fine-toothed comb when you take it in, and the person doing it is trained to find any little thing they can that is to their advantage in negotiating with you (or, even worse, assessing extras you have to pay for that were not part of normal wear and tear in your lease).

Auto negotiations are not fair, simply because you're up against people who do this for a living, and a dollar to your advantage is a dollar to their disadvantage, so they will use everything they can to get the best deal for themselves.

Good luck!