End of Lease Strategies?

[bickspickles]

Hello all,
I also have a 2013 LEAF 3 year lease finishing in October 2016 and have been mailed an offer of $7500 off the current payoff quote.
Just thought I would share my details in this thread in case they are of interest to anyone.

My payoff today is $13,350. I called NMAC to confirm the $7500 applied to my lease and was told that it does and I need to do the transaction with my dealer. I am in Atlanta, Georgia, US. Called dealer and here is their calculation:

$13350 - $7500 = $5850
plus:
$300. buy fee (in lease contract)
$689. dealer fee (explanation was 'we have to make money')
$479. (GA sales tax)
$70. GA tag/title/registration
total owed to drive out as owner: $7388.

I put $5200 down to drive this LEAF off the lot and have made $6650 in payments.
I received the full $5000 GA tax credit so I am in for $6850. Paying the $7388 to own would mean I have paid $14238. all up for this LEAF.
Its 2.5 years old, 25K miles, has no issues and all battery bars are good.

On top I do actually consider that I have saved an average of $100 a month on gas expenses over the last 30 months ($3000) so in the back of my mind I sort of feel like I am going to own this thing for $11238. and continue to enjoy the gas savings moving forward. And its still a nice new little ride that I enjoy driving a lot!

I will probably close this deal early next week as they did say this $7500 strictly expires on 3/31.
(I doubt it - but won't risk it)

Hope this helps someone, let me know if you have any questions!

UPDATE:
I decided to poll the other Nissan dealers in my area to see if anyone would waive the "dealers fee". Several called right away - some to say NO WAY and a couple others willing to do it to get a "sale" on the day.

I went into a dealer in Decatur Saturday and spent 2 hours doing the deal. The math didnt work out exactly because this dealer's fee was less but I did save another $500. So I drove off with a 30 month old Nissan (LEAF) that has only been driven by me and has all battery bars and no issues for $6888. all up (tax, tag, reg, etc...).

Dealers can't help themselves and so there was a little last minute drama to try to force me to finance through NMAC but I was very willing to walk and that "problem" disappeared quickly. They claimed Nissan financing was required in order to get the $7500 discount on buyout - but that was not true.

With the price of LEAFs plummeting I cant recommend this deal for everyone. In fact, another couple thousand and there is no way I would have done this. But for me - in the end I got a cool car for 50 cents on the dollar. Thanks Nissan!

 

[LeftieBiker]

I got the same offer today, but my payoff amount is well North of $18k, so I probably won't take it. If my car had near 12 full bars, instead of about 11 1/3, and had QC, I'd be much more tempted. (Not that we actually have QC stations where I need them yet, but it's creeping closer.)

What worries me, though, is that about a month after happily extending my lease again over the phone, I still haven't gotten the extension paperwork! I'm getting other offers like the above, and Nissan is acting like my lease still ends on 6/2/16, instead of the new 6/1/17 date, so I'm getting nervous. So, has anyone else who extended in February gotten the actual extension document yet?

 

[bickspickles]

Wow! How do you have a 18k payoff on a 2013 leaf? I dont blame you for not buying. The retail price is plummeting so fast its scary.
The Kelly Blue Book private sale value of my LEAF is $8400. If you have all the whistles and bells you might be looking at closer to $11k resale.
IMO it doesn't make financial sense to buy out that lease. I cant comment on the extensions to the lease as I haven't done that. Good Luck!

 

[Deleted member 9549]

Wow! How do you have a 18k payoff on a 2013 leaf? I dont blame you for not buying. The retail price is plummeting so fast its scary.
The Kelly Blue Book private sale value of my LEAF is $8400. If you have all the whistles and bells you might be looking at closer to $11k resale.
IMO it doesn't make financial sense to buy out that lease. I cant comment on the extensions to the lease as I haven't done that. Good Luck!

My payoff for my 2013 LEAF is $19,500 or so. When I was trying to decide about keeping it or not last fall, I called and they had reduced the discount from $6500, to only $5000. So I had the privilege of buying my now almost out of warranty LEAF for $14,500. That while they were listed locally for $10,500 which was up from $9500 over last summer. I couldn't justify spending an additional $4000 even though our LEAF has been very pampered.

Our lease was a 2 year lease, $205 down and $205/mo. Our payments were so low because the residual was so high. I'm amazed that extending out 2 year lease to 3 years barely budged the residual.

Ok. I just looked up the actual numbers. For April 2016, our payout on our 2013 LEAF (with 37,000 miles and out of warranty) is $19,385. Our original residual was $20,682.

Nissan tried hard to get us into a LEAF but chased us away from keeping it.

 

[Deleted member 9549]

I got the same offer today, but my payoff amount is well North of $18k, so I probably won't take it. If my car had near 12 full bars, instead of about 11 1/3, and had QC, I'd be much more tempted. (Not that we actually have QC stations where I need them yet, but it's creeping closer.)

What worries me, though, is that about a month after happily extending my lease again over the phone, I still haven't gotten the extension paperwork! I'm getting other offers like the above, and Nissan is acting like my lease still ends on 6/2/16, instead of the new 6/1/17 date, so I'm getting nervous. So, has anyone else who extended in February gotten the actual extension document yet?

We've been looking for a replacement car since November. At one point on a whim I called NMAC and they said we could extend our already extended 2 year lease for an additional year to make it a 4 year lease. We received the paperwork within a week or two. That was back in January and we've been sitting on the paperwork ever since. We bought an ICE and plan to return the car, but now we're running into some issues with the new car and may hold on to the LEAF for a month or two until it gets sorted out. Our lease also ends 6/2/2016, unless we send in the extension in which case its 6/2/2017.

 

[LeftieBiker]

Wow! How do you have a 18k payoff on a 2013 leaf?

By having a monthly payment of $149 - now $159 with tax on the extension.

Looks like I have to call them again, as I should have gotten those papers by now. Dammit.

 

[djkjmuoh]

Hello all,

After reading pretty deep into this lengthy thread (back to early 2015 or so) I have concluded that many of you are interested in extending your leases while some of you, like myself, are interested in taking various "buyout discounts" that have been offered.

It is my understanding that the current buyout offer, good only for a few more days until 2/29/16 is $6k off residual value... but who knows if this will go back up to $6.5k or down to $5k on 3/1/16, as people have indicated these discounts have previously been. Quite the gamble!

Here is my question for you all... What would you do? / What advice can you give? ...Based on the following info about my LEAF:

2013 LEAF SL
Leased on 6/21/13
Bose Sound System and Around View Monitor (Premium Pkg?)
6.6kw charger w/ DCQC Port
~52,500 current miles with 60,000 miles max allowed on the lease (most of the miles are likely to be used but not exceeded)
ZERO Capacity Bars lost (IL home and work garage kept, usually charged to 80%, infrequently DCQC'd, infrequently charged to 100%)
$16,334 Residual Value with current monthly payments of $463.33 after $0 down (used Fed $7.5k as my down payment)


Given $6k off my residual value (added in below) the Cars.com auto loan calculator suggests the following:

Residual Value: $16,334
Buyout Vehicle Price: $10,334
Down Payment: $0
Trade-In Value: $0
Sales Tax: 8.25%
Approx (APR): 5% (my guess based on what I see at my bank)
Term (Months): 36 months
Monthly Payment: $335.27

This would lower my monthly payment by almost $130/month and probably get me to 120,000 gas free miles with little maintenance. Thus far, I have had little to no real problems (knock on wood.) I am really leaning toward buying it out (esp. if the $6k incentive exists) and keeping the car for another 3 years and approximately 60k miles more. Then it will be paid off and I can sell it for whatever I can get and use that as the downpayment toward whatever exists then! Maybe I'll put $1k down on March 31st 2016 for the Tesla Model 3 and by the time June 2019 rolls around, my 36 extra months of payments will be done and that car will actually be out!

Thoughts?

Thought I'd post an update to this after spending a good portion of my day going from dealer to dealer seeing if anyone could get me a better End-Of-Lease buyout deal (which had gone up to $7,500 in March from my $6k offer in February.) I heard there were certain dealer incentives (up to $1500?) that could be passed on to the customer potentially and NMAC came out and basically said this themselves to me on the phone earlier today to my surprise. That said, 2 local dealers said they could only offer the $7500 NMAC incentive and no more. I decided to try a 3rd before calling it quits and low and behold some progress, but not without drama 1st....

Residual Value: $16,334
Current Payoff Quote: $17,154 (I still have 2 more payments in my lease due, that's why it's higher than the residual)
Current Payoff after $7,500 NMAC Incentive: $9,654
Purchase Fee as seen in contract: $300
Buyout with Purchase Fee included (before taxes/license/title/etc): $9,954

This 3rd dealer brought the sales manger over, of course, and he offered me $10,454, saying the extra $$$ above $9,954 was for "paperwork." I explained that I appreciated their time but that I wouldn't accept. The sales manager offered to meet me in the middle at $10,254. I asked why I would do that when everyone else was sticking to the NMAC offer of $7,500 off my payoff quote. He came back with $9,100 somehow and said today only and that they were available until 9pm. Of course I received a call from them at 8pm wondering if I had found any better so I wonder what will happen in the next day or so.... there was just no way I could make it back the same night and also not shop around some more.

Anyone else experience this?

 

[LeftieBiker]

Anyone else experience this?

Not since I decided to treat all car salescreatures as plague-infected cannibals. I'm not looking forward to seeing them again for my once-a-year service nightmare, and then later on this year, to bargain for a 2016SV...

I have hopefully gotten my lease extension rolling again. After spending a mere 20 minutes on hold (yes, it was the lease specialist number), I got through, and the nice woman at the other end offered to email me the lease extension form, and gave me the PW to open the PDF to print it. I successfully did both, and will be mailing it tomorrow, with some sort of delivery confirmation. I wish I had opted for that the first time, if it was offered.

 

[iluvmacs]

What worries me, though, is that about a month after happily extending my lease again over the phone, I still haven't gotten the extension paperwork! I'm getting other offers like the above, and Nissan is acting like my lease still ends on 6/2/16, instead of the new 6/1/17 date, so I'm getting nervous. So, has anyone else who extended in February gotten the actual extension document yet?

They sent me mine via email while I was on the phone...

 

[LeftieBiker]

They sent me mine via email while I was on the phone...

As they did me, last night. I think that option may have been offered me before, but I wanted the paper docs...oh, and I think my printer may have been dead at that time. Just my luck!

 

[composer47]

Hello all,
I also have a 2013 LEAF 3 year lease finishing in October 2016 and have been mailed an offer of $7500 off the current payoff quote.
Just thought I would share my details in this thread in case they are of interest to anyone.

I put $5200 down to drive this LEAF off the lot and have made $6650 in payments.
I received the full $5000 GA tax credit so I am in for $6850. Paying the $7388 to own would mean I have paid $14238. all up for this LEAF.
Its 2.5 years old, 25K miles, has no issues and all battery bars are good.

On top I do actually consider that I have saved an average of $100 a month on gas expenses over the last 30 months ($3000) so in the back of my mind I sort of feel like I am going to own this thing for $11238. and continue to enjoy the gas savings moving forward. And its still a nice new little ride that I enjoy driving a lot!

Thanks for sharing your story. In your case, it looks like you were already heavily invested because you put so much money down on the car. I have several friends in the Atlanta area that are paying $250/mo with $0 down for S w/QC. The fact you were paying $220/mo with $5000 down got me thinking this was an SL (premium) trim? Anyway, that is why your residual is so low compared to a lot of other people.

The gas savings are nice, however, they aren't $1200/yr nice - especially in GA :-( If you do the math, you'll see its more like $250/year with the current gas prices. Here is how I figure it: 850 miles/month. If you compare a decent sedan getting 30mpg @ $2/gallon, thats $57/month. $57/mo * 12 = $684 year for a gas car right now. You live in ATL, so you also now pay $200/year EV tax. So now you're at $484. I don't know about you, but my electric bill went up about $20/month to charge my car. So $484 - $240 = $244/year savings. (even if gas was $3/gallon that's $580/year). Sorry to burst your bubble there, but I can't figure out how you get to $100/month given your low mileage. :-(

My 2014 SL lease is due up in June. I was leaning towards purchasing it, but I don't want to deal with these dealers!

 

[djkjmuoh]

Hello all,

After reading pretty deep into this lengthy thread (back to early 2015 or so) I have concluded that many of you are interested in extending your leases while some of you, like myself, are interested in taking various "buyout discounts" that have been offered.

It is my understanding that the current buyout offer, good only for a few more days until 2/29/16 is $6k off residual value... but who knows if this will go back up to $6.5k or down to $5k on 3/1/16, as people have indicated these discounts have previously been. Quite the gamble!

Here is my question for you all... What would you do? / What advice can you give? ...Based on the following info about my LEAF:

2013 LEAF SL
Leased on 6/21/13
Bose Sound System and Around View Monitor (Premium Pkg?)
6.6kw charger w/ DCQC Port
~52,500 current miles with 60,000 miles max allowed on the lease (most of the miles are likely to be used but not exceeded)
ZERO Capacity Bars lost (IL home and work garage kept, usually charged to 80%, infrequently DCQC'd, infrequently charged to 100%)
$16,334 Residual Value with current monthly payments of $463.33 after $0 down (used Fed $7.5k as my down payment)


Given $6k off my residual value (added in below) the Cars.com auto loan calculator suggests the following:

Residual Value: $16,334
Buyout Vehicle Price: $10,334
Down Payment: $0
Trade-In Value: $0
Sales Tax: 8.25%
Approx (APR): 5% (my guess based on what I see at my bank)
Term (Months): 36 months
Monthly Payment: $335.27

This would lower my monthly payment by almost $130/month and probably get me to 120,000 gas free miles with little maintenance. Thus far, I have had little to no real problems (knock on wood.) I am really leaning toward buying it out (esp. if the $6k incentive exists) and keeping the car for another 3 years and approximately 60k miles more. Then it will be paid off and I can sell it for whatever I can get and use that as the downpayment toward whatever exists then! Maybe I'll put $1k down on March 31st 2016 for the Tesla Model 3 and by the time June 2019 rolls around, my 36 extra months of payments will be done and that car will actually be out!

Thoughts?

Thought I'd post an update to this after spending a good portion of my day going from dealer to dealer seeing if anyone could get me a better End-Of-Lease buyout deal (which had gone up to $7,500 in March from my $6k offer in February.) I heard there were certain dealer incentives (up to $1500?) that could be passed on to the customer potentially and NMAC came out and basically said this themselves to me on the phone earlier today to my surprise. That said, 2 local dealers said they could only offer the $7500 NMAC incentive and no more. I decided to try a 3rd before calling it quits and low and behold some progress, but not without drama 1st....

Residual Value: $16,334
Current Payoff Quote: $17,154 (I still have 2 more payments in my lease due, that's why it's higher than the residual)
Current Payoff after $7,500 NMAC Incentive: $9,654
Purchase Fee as seen in contract: $300
Buyout with Purchase Fee included (before taxes/license/title/etc): $9,954

This 3rd dealer brought the sales manger over, of course, and he offered me $10,454, saying the extra $$$ above $9,954 was for "paperwork." I explained that I appreciated their time but that I wouldn't accept. The sales manager offered to meet me in the middle at $10,254. I asked why I would do that when everyone else was sticking to the NMAC offer of $7,500 off my payoff quote. He came back with $9,100 somehow and said today only and that they were available until 9pm. Of course I received a call from them at 8pm wondering if I had found any better so I wonder what will happen in the next day or so.... there was just no way I could make it back the same night and also not shop around some more.

Anyone else experience this?

Final anticipated update to this story as I have BOUGHT my 2013 Nissan LEAF SL out of it's lease. The outcome was basically something like this...

Day 1, Dealer #1: Glendale Nissan; Glendale Heights, IL: Current Payoff Value $17,143 - $7,500 = $9,643 + $300 Purchase Fee = $9,943 + Tax/Title/Doc Fees

Day 1, Dealer #2: Bill Kay Nissan; Downers Grove, IL: Current Payoff Value $17,143 - $7,500 = $9,643 + $300 Purchase Fee = $9,943 + Tax/Title/Doc Fees

Day 1, Dealer #3 Quote #1: Gerald Nissan; Naperville, IL: Current Payoff Value $17,143 - $7,500 = $9,643 + $300 Purchase Fee = $9,943 + $500 Random Unnamed "Paperwork Fees" = $10,443 + Tax/Title/Doc Fees

Day 1, Dealer #3 Quote #2: Gerald Nissan; Naperville, IL: Current Payoff Value $17,143 - $7,500 = $9,643 + $300 Purchase Fee = $9,943 + (*lowered) $300 Random Unnamed "Paperwork Fees" = $10,243 + Tax/Title/Doc Fees (*offered to "get me to do business with them right now")

Day 1, Dealer #3 Quote #3: Gerald Nissan; Naperville, IL: Current Payoff Value $17,143 - $7,500 = $9,643 + $300 Purchase Fee = $9,943 - $843 Random Unnamed "Buy it today from us deal" = $9,100 + Tax/Title/Doc Fees

Day 2, Dealer #4: Woodfield Nissan; Hoffman Estates, IL: Current Payoff Value $17,143 - $7,500 = $9,643 + $300 Purchase Fee = $9,943 + Tax/Title/Doc Fees

Day 2, Dealer #5: Al Piemonte Nissan; Melrose Park, IL: Current Payoff Value $17,143 - $7,500 = $9,643 + $300 Purchase Fee = $9,943 - $1,500 Dealer "RPM" Incentive = $8,443 + Tax/Title/Doc Fees


I almost gave up and wasn't going to go to Al Piemonte Nissan after Woodfield Nissan was the 3rd dealer to say "No Further Incentives." But after Gerald tried to MAKE money on the buyout and then suddenly wanted to make the SALE more, I knew something was up! To me, that was a bit shady, though they gave me a good number. I was going to buy from them just because of the cheaper price but I am SO GLAD I stopped in Al Piemonte Nissan. The people were amazing from the get go and brought me out a worksheet that showed the LEAF incentives including both the $7,500 and dealer $1,500. They weren't hiding a thing and said they'd give it to me, no hesitations!

Don't give up fellow LEAF'ers!

 

[LeftieBiker]

So, theoretically, I might be able to find a dealer who would add $1500 to the $7500 incentive, because they get a larger rebate from Nissan? I'm a little confused on this...

 

[Deleted member 9549]

Awesome. At $9000 off our $19385 residual, we would definitely have bought our lease. But instead, Nissan only offered $5000 when we needed to make a decision. So we ordered and bought an ICE. If only we had known.

 

[LeftieBiker]

Awesome. At $9000 off our $19385 residual, we would definitely have bought our lease. But instead, Nissan only offered $5000 when we needed to make a decision. So we ordered and bought an ICE. If only we had known.

My buyout would be around $9500 with this, but I'm still on the fence. I'll probably lose the 12th bar this Summer, and while 11 bars is enough for most of my driving, I'd have to finance it, and pay about $200 a month for 5 years, for a car with no warranty after May...

I'm still thinking of either leasing a 2016 SV, or leasing a Volt if Nissan's leases stay too expensive.

 

[TimLee]

... Day 2, Dealer #5: Al Piemonte Nissan; Melrose Park, IL: Current Payoff Value $17,143 - $7,500 = $9,643 + $300 Purchase Fee = $9,943 - $1,500 Dealer "RPM" Incentive = $8,443 + Tax/Title/Doc Fees
...

What is this?

Possible dealer is short on their sales requirement for the month?
Need to get the sale to get significant monthly payment from Nissan, and they are willing to share some of those $ to make the sale?

But whatever it is, a great deal.
Congratulations

 

[mihird]

Awesome. At $9000 off our $19385 residual, we would definitely have bought our lease. But instead, Nissan only offered $5000 when we needed to make a decision. So we ordered and bought an ICE. If only we had known.

My buyout would be around $9500 with this, but I'm still on the fence. I'll probably lose the 12th bar this Summer, and while 11 bars is enough for most of my driving, I'd have to finance it, and pay about $200 a month for 5 years, for a car with no warranty after May...

I'm still thinking of either leasing a 2016 SV, or leasing a Volt if Nissan's leases stay too expensive.

My local dealer is running a $2999 down (in CA we get $2500 back from the state, making it $500 down) and $198/month+tax for a 2016 SV..
3 years/12K miles...

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/ctd/5497471998.html

The 2016 S Model with QC, by the way is down to $2500 ($0) down down - $149/month...

 

[Deleted member 9549]

Our LEAF is now officially returned. Sorry to see it go. One of the best car's we've had. $19300 residual was too high.

 

[LeftieBiker]

My local dealer is running a $2999 down (in CA we get $2500 back from the state, making it $500 down) and $198/month+tax for a 2016 SV..
3 years/12K miles...

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/ctd/5497471998.html

That's a "Base" SV. I need/want one with Premium Package. At least they realize this time around that the Base is harder to move.

EDIT: The leaf in the photo looks like it has Premium, but the ad doesn't say "for this car" and the SL listing mentions "Premium."

 

[mihird]

I was able to negotiate close to free pricing on the premium package when I got my 2013 (like $5/month more), but for 2016, most dealers I have talked to want a hefty premium ($15-$20/month) for the premium package...Don't know what it is with them this time...but I think, you are right on target...by Memorial day, the prices should deflate a bit further....