czr

iTrader: (3)

Hey all,

Let's discuss our lease buyout experiences on this thread. I'll start with mine -

My lease is going to expire in January 2008. It was a 48 month lease. It is a 2004 GT Manual Titanium Grey Loaded minus Navi. It has the appearance package, added strakes, tint, MP3/CD player, Racing Beat Exhaust, etc.

In January it will have approximately 48k miles and the residual buyout is $15900. It is in excellent shape. If I were to turn it in at end of the lease I would have to pay excess wear and tear (I know they will bullshit me the car is perfect) and a $450 disposition fee, so these amounts come in to play if I decide to buy another car.

I already received an initial letter from the leasing company to buy out the car. I am going to ignore this letter and any subsequent ones until a month before my lease ends, then I will see if I can negotiate a lower price and find out my options.

Does anyone have any experience with negotiating a lease buy out? The leasing company is not Mazda NA, but National City Bank. Also, how is the process of wear and tear calculated. Do I have an opportunity to go over the issues with the car with a representative before I turn it in?

Please post your experiences on here. The closer I get to my turn in date, I will update this thread and keep people posted.

Thanks, czr

fredw1

I have seen a few other threads were quite a few people didn't have much luck in negotiating a lower price through Mazda NA.

Zoom-Zoom Dealer

You should be able to negotiate your lease end buy out, but it needs to make financial sense for National City to do so. First, you need to find out what vehicles, similar to yours, are going for at auction as this is where National City will be taking your car to should they get it back from you. CarMax, if you've got one in your area, is another good source to go to for vehicle value. If this amount is significantly lower than your buy-out then you have room to negotiate. For example...RX-8's like yours are going for $10k in your area at auction. Your buy-out is $15.9k. If the bank takes your car back and then sells it at auction for $10k they just lost $6k!!! They don't want to do that. But you would need to offer them something less than the 6k. Like $3k. Follow? Good luck. Or turn it in and lease a Speed3. Make sure you do all of this BEFORE the lease turn-in inspection.

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