seweryn

ok so what are the fees if you terminate your lease early? I am thinking about terminating my e320 lease because of the new slk that is coming I want to know if it tarnishes your credit history and what will the fees amount to for the termination. If anyone knows please tell me.

akbro93704

My dad had a 2001 ML320 on a three year lease, and terminated the lease at two years and then leased a ML55. He leased it through MB Credit, and had to pay for the mileage he had gone over, plus all of the rest of his payments he still had left. For example, if your payment is $800 a month, and you have 10 months left, you have to pay $8,000 dollars just to terminate the lease.
There's an alternative: to transfer your lease to someone else, and there are only minor fees going along with that.
PS- lots of info on MB leasing here-->http://www.mercedeslease.org/

Tandrek

Exactly, though I still feel that's crap. Why not just pay the $800/mo and keep the car for another ten months, instead of making the ten months worth of payments at once and handing over the vehicle? Even if you want to lease another car NOW... you would have two cars, instead of just throwing away that $8000.

MadManAboutTown

Definitely - why just throw away $$$ to your local dealer (do you really think MB Credit gets it all)?!?

Brunelleschi

Does that sound really f*kin crooked to anyone but me?!?!

kort677

what's crooked about it?

If you lease any car you signed a contract to lease that car for x amount of time, you are obliged to make those payments, if you don't you are in breach of your contract.
sometimes the manufactuer will allow you to terminate early if you get another one of theiir cars, the OP should see if some kind of deal can be worked out

Brunelleschi

I agree to an extent. My thoughts are though that the earlier a dealership gets back a leased vehicle, the more they are going to be able to list the vehicle to re-sell. I would think that consideration would be taken into account...then again....hmmm. Ok..I don't really have a stong leg to stand on...but it just seems twisted that someone will turn in their vehicle, the dealership will most likely have it re-sold for a profit within a few weeks, and will still be collecting from the original lease.

alewifebp

It is not really crooked, but not necessarily that fair, since the the leasing company will have a higher residual on the vehicle, and would therefore get more money at wholesale.

Generally, it is never a financially sound investment to terminate a lease early, for any manufacturer. What is crooked are those dealerships that deal with lower priced vehicles, and offer to, usually with some guy screaming on a commercial, that we will even take in your lease! They make it seem like they will be giving you a great deal, but will in the example above, just roll in the $800/month x 10 months, then divide by 36 months for the new lease.

BUT, as has been mentioned, if you can find someone else to take over your lease, you will get ouf of the deal for limited fees out of pocket.

saffrontiger

A contract is a contract. Period. Unless you signed this under the influence or duress just drive it until your contractual obligation is over. If money is not a grave concern, then do it!

Kar don

Ok, I have terminated 2 leases early. I terminated my Lexus IS300 12 months early. I called around and found out how much dealers would buy my car from me for. I sold it to the dealer for 19k and my current lease pay off at the time was 18,500... so I actually got a 500 dollar check and they took the car back from me! I also got rid of a honda civic that was leased 7 months early, dealer offered 10,800 on a trade.. $11,500 was owed so we paid 700 bucks to end that lease. So my advice is to find out your current lease pay off and then find out what the dealer will give you for trade in.... paying off the rest of the payments will always rip you off... try and get rid of your lease this way (dealers never mention/offer this way to terminate your lease btw).

michael10128

Go to swaplease.com its awesome, my brother has sold his leases on two cars...its a fee upfront to swaplease..

I have heard nothing but good things about it.

seweryn

thanks for the tips and info guys. looks like im going to have 2 cars.

fazooley

I went through the same thing around 5 months ago when I was on a mission for a new e500. At the time I had a 02 Audi A6 with 17 months left on the lease at 575.00 a month. For me it didnt pay to have 2 cars as I would have never used them both and paying for parking in ny for 2 cars is way over budget. The only thing they would do would add the payments into the new lease payment, didnt make too much sense so I gave the car to my little brother for the last 17 months of the lease and just paid it off. There really is no easy way to get over on them for lease termination and even these lease swap places or lease takeover places in some cases your ultimately STILL responsible for the remaining payments. At least thats how it was with Audi Financial, they would transfer over the lease to another person, however you still stayed on as a cosigner encase they decided not to pay.

Fazooley

alewifebp

Fazolley makes a good point. When getting someone else to take over your lease, you want to make extra sure of the contract terms, because most of them will come after you if the person that you gave the lease to decides to bail. So that assumes that you should find someone that you know well enough to trust that they will do the right thing.

I was also able to get out of a lease for a Honda Accord by terminating it early and selling it to someone else. I lost about $500 on the deal, but that was a lot better than keeping two cars for the 6 month overlap that I had between that and my Lexus.

everyONEelse

The most economical solution is always to wait the lease out.

But, when that is not an option, instead of 'terminating' the lease, the way to go is to trade-in the currently leased car. Just as AlBoston suggests.

Find out the trade-in value of your car. Find out the lease pay-off (which is how much you would have to pay if you wanted to buy your leased car today), and you are only hooked for the difference which is usually 1-2K.

In some rare cases, you even make money, as in the case of the IS300 below.

This doesn't affect your credit at all, and the out of pocket is minimal (in comparison to the alternatives).

DavidNJ

One of the problems, at least in NJ is the sales tax. In NJ, you are only taxed on the residual in a lease. If you buy out the lease you have to pay sales tax on the rest. For example, assume $50k car with a $30k residual. To buy the car, you would have to pay $1800 in sales tax. If you traded on another lease it would not be refundable. Just lost.

Also, while I'm pontificating, while I didn't investigate the details of swaplease.com, I did find something interesting. A lot of those cars have a lot of mileage left. It looks like there are people with 12k mile leases that only did maybe 6k miles in the first two years. For the last year they have 24k miles left! For a high mileage driver, that may be a big advantage...using up miles that are otherwise lost.

hermesbb

Hi, I am a newbie here

I was wondering if using this option AlBoston suggested, does it have to be a trade-in for it to work or you can simple terminating the lease without getting a new car?

Please help thanks.