Help with breaking a car lease please!

[TandJ61574]

Hi All,

I am sure this has been asked before but here goes. My son leased a car in Nov. 2002 and the lease is for 39 months. He lost his job in Sept. 2003 and has been faithfully making payments and will be starting his own business in a few weeks.

He will be buying a truck (needed for the biz) but would like to get out of his current car lease.

He tried calling the leasing co. today but they are not in until Monday. Just wondering if anyone has done this when they lost their job or just wanted to stop leasing? I know it's not easy to do so do you think they might even consider letting my son transfer the lease to someone else?

TIA

 

[mudnuri]

Do they have a website he can look at?

Or just do a google search on "early lease termination" and see what he comes up with, that will give you an idea.

FYI- with GMAC if you re-lease you can break a lease early with no fee's as long as your not over your mileage..I just did it Tuesday.

Brandy

 

[jel0511]

The only way to get out of a lease nowadays is to have the lease bought out. You have to find out the buyout amount, which is usually equal to the sum of all the payments, plus the reisdual of the car, less a small amount of interest. You have to either sell the car yourself, or trade it in, which usually amounts into a person owing a significant amount of money. There is no termination clauses writen in leases anymore, since the leasing companies were getting stuck with too many people ending leases early in the past. There are also no transfer clauses to protect the leasing company from a leasee transferring a lease to a non-credit worthy customer. Some dealerships will allow the person trying to get out of a lease, "roll" the amount owed from the lease termination into a new lease or financing. The GMAC amnesty program is for cars that have been on a lease for at least 24 months. My sister has had her car since about the same time as your son, and she's been told that she can't get out of her lease until the end of the year, with the amnesty program.

 

[TandJ61574]

Thanks mudnuri

yes he went on their website (nissan) and couldn't find anything and also went on google and that is where he got the info from a website called leasetrader.com about transfering a lease to someone else.

Anyone else terminate a lease or transfer?

 

[TandJ61574]

Originally posted by jel0511
You have to either sell the car yourself

do you think they would let him sell it?

 

[mudnuri]

Some dealerships will allow the person trying to get out of a lease, "roll" the amount owed from the lease termination into a new lease or financing.

Well, thats not true ...I just got out of my Grand Am...which I had for 12 months on this past Tuesday....

The Sticker Price of the Envoy I am now leasing is the ONLY price....there was no "roll" into my new lease. With GMAC if you terminate early, into another gmac lease, there are no penalties. I am paying only for the amount of the Envoy that I would be paying if I did not get out of my Grand am 24 months early.....

I just did a "sign and drive" with no money down, and no hidden fee's etc.... of course, it also depends on how the dealer is rated with GMAC...my dealer is very highly rated in their system.

Basically what you said is NOT what happened to me at all. And this was 5 days ago.

Brandy

 

[katerkat]

We were told we could only get out of our GMAC lease by buying or leasing a new GM vehicle -- IF we had an offer to do so. We got an offer in August and were not prepared to get a new car then. In December, we looked into getting out of the lease (Saturn) with a Chevy, and GMAC told us no because they were not offering it to us then. In fact, we turned in the car two weeks early in February and they were pissy about it.

 

[CarolA]

I sold my car that was on lease. I paid the lease amount plus the buy out amount and kept the difference.

This should all be spelled out in the lease papers. What you are looking for is the residual value. Then you also have to make enough to cover the Present Value of the lease payments which would be a little less then the monthly payments times the number of months less.

However, it is hard to make money on the deal. The residual values are set very high. I had an Infiniti with VERY low milage which helped me.

 

[preshi]

I had my Jetta lease bought out by Toyota. It was the best way to go, I was making insane payments on that death trap and we needed a bigger vehicle with 2 dogs and another baby on the way. Worked out nicely.

 

[AspiringCindy]

What happens if you try to terminate a lease, to buy or lease another vehicle...but you've put a large sum of money up front? Do you ever get credit towards your new vehicle?

 

[TandJ61574]

bump

 

[Dan Murphy]

http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/leasing/resource/different/early.htm

I have leased 11 or 12 cars in my family over the past dozen years or so (I like that method). You can 'end' a lease early, that is, return the car prior to stated end of lease. Depending on any 'spiffs' the factory has at the time (whether with the consumer and/or the dealer) to encourage acquisition of new vehicles, (whether lease, purchase, finance or whatever), 'rebates', interest rates or factors used, holdbacks, lengths of time of old and new finance/lease periods and residuals used, a dealer can just about make a deal look like whatever you want it to look like, and make you walk out with a smile. And a smile likewise on the dealer. Not to say it is wrong for both to be smiling, just saying oftentimes, what we think occurred, may not actually have been fully what we think. Again, not saying that is wrong.