# Tesla buying out existing leases



## Eric

I still have a year left on my BMW lease and my neighbor told me that Tesla is now buying them out and working it into the deal to purchase one of their own cars. So I called the Tesla dealership and they said that while they are doing that, my card does not qualify because BMW is refusing to allow Tesla to buy out their leases. Just wondering if anyone else has heard of this. I'll likely just finish out my least and wash my hands of it, then buy Tesla, I just have to wait it out.


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## quagmire

Waiting is not always a bad thing. Maybe the car market will return to normal and the price of the car will go down( especially with BBB dead). Depending on what Tesla you want, the Y will see some substantial updates by next year* when your lease is up.

*No published date of when updates will be incorporated into the Y. They just happen. Potential updates by the time your lease ends is single cast front sub-frame, new paint colors, and the new 4680 battery.

What sucks about turning in the lease is timing with ordering the Tesla. Time it wrong, lease ends, still no Tesla! Or Tesla shows up early and still have 1-2 more months of lease payments on old car.

Carmax buys out leases so they may be an option. I used Carmax when I sold my Camaro. Completely easy process, though my Camaro was financed.


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## DT

Yeah, have you gotten quotes from Carmax, Carvana, Vroom?  Given the current climate, you may have tons of positive equity and you can do the quotes completely automated.

That being said, there's some pretty notable Tesla updates on deck for the Model 3 and Y.  Some of the Y updates have hit the China market, and there's a whole documented set of changes for the European market, people are assuming they'll be arriving the US in '22, so waiting is also not a bad idea if you're not in a rush and have a year left anyway.


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## quagmire

Yeah forgot about the pending change from the Intel Atom to the AMD Ryzen that China and Europe is getting. Few other updates too, but not something I would hold out for.


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## Eric

quagmire said:


> Waiting is not always a bad thing. Maybe the car market will return to normal and the price of the car will go down( especially with BBB dead). Depending on what Tesla you want, the Y will see some substantial updates by next year* when your lease is up.
> 
> *No published date of when updates will be incorporated into the Y. They just happen. Potential updates by the time your lease ends is single cast front sub-frame, new paint colors, and the new 4680 battery.
> 
> What sucks about turning in the lease is timing with ordering the Tesla. Time it wrong, lease ends, still no Tesla! Or Tesla shows up early and still have 1-2 more months of lease payments on old car.
> 
> *Carmax buys out leases so they may be an option. I used Carmax when I told my Camaro. Completely easy process, though my Camaro was financed.*



Okay, just tried this and wow, they're offering us $15K over what the dealership offered and more than $4K over KBB. Going to check into what my payoff is but this sounds promising. I didn't see anything for paying off leases but I think they go by the payoff value anyway, I'll follow up but this was great advice, thanks!


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## Joe

I heard Tesla was making a phone!


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## DT

@Eric

Check with all three of the services mentioned, I noticed a good $3000-4000 variation in the offers for our two cars.

Carvana is nice because they come to your house, pick up the car with a flatbed, pay you right there (we did an EFT), and we did it twice this year and both times it was zero hassle.  The actual pickup was < 10 minutes.


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## Eric

DT said:


> @Eric
> 
> Check with all three of the services mentioned, I noticed a good $3000-4000 variation in the offers for our two cars.
> 
> Carvana is nice because they come to your house, pick up the car with a flatbed, pay you right there (we did an EFT), and we did it twice this year and both times it was zero hassle.  The actual pickup was < 10 minutes.



Been spending some time on this and it turns out BMW will NOT allow you to sell out your lease, at the same time they low-balled me (by like more than $15K below what CarMax offered) on the buyout which basically means they have you by the balls. So instead, I'm just going to purchase the car (through BMW financing) for the payout price to get the title in my name, then sell it out to CarMax.

One would think that BMW would be interested in paying the same price as the others with the current market but no, apparently they're above that, so this is my only alternative. More of a pain in the ass than anything but it will work.


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## DT

Eric said:


> Been spending some time on this and it turns out BMW will NOT allow you to sell out your lease, at the same time they low-balled me (by like more than $15K below what CarMax offered) on the buyout which basically means they have you by the balls. So instead, I'm just going to purchase the car (through BMW financing) for the payout price to get the title in my name, then sell it out to CarMax.
> 
> One would think that BMW would be interested in paying the same price as the others with the current market but no, apparently they're above that, so this is my only alternative. More of a pain in the ass than anything but it will work.




That's exactly what we did with the DD/RT, in our case, there was some kind of situation where Carvana couldn't do a buyout because the lease termination date was less than 30 days (no idea the logic of that).

So the only option was for us to just buy the DD/RT ourselves, so we did that, waited for the title, and in the 2 weeks that took, the Carvana quote lapsed and the new quote was $2000 more hahahaha   We got ~$10K over our buyout price.


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## DT

So what's the plan?  Model 3 or Y?  LR?  Performance?  Oh wait, Model S Plaid ... DO IT


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## Eric

DT said:


> That's exactly what we did with the DD/RT, in our case, there was some kind of situation where Carvana couldn't do a buyout because the lease termination date was less than 30 days (no idea the logic of that).
> 
> So the only option was for us to just buy the DD/RT ourselves, so we did that, waited for the title, and in the 2 weeks that took, the Carvana quote lapsed and the new quote was $2000 more hahahaha   We got ~$10K over our buyout price.



Glad I'm not the only one lol.. I'm looking at the 3 with some options but still have to consider what the down payment would look like, out of pocket between that and the loss I'm taking on my existing car this may be too steep but we're going to weigh it all out.


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## Herdfan

How quickly can you get o


DT said:


> So what's the plan?  Model 3 or Y?  LR?  Performance?  Oh wait, Model S Plaid ... DO IT




The nomenclature bothers me. LOL

So the 3 is a sedan, the Y is a SUVish and the X is an SUV.  Following that where the numbers are sedans and letters are SUV's, the S should be an SUV, but it's a sedan.


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## quagmire

Herdfan said:


> How quickly can you get o
> 
> 
> The nomenclature bothers me. LOL
> 
> So the 3 is a sedan, the Y is a SUVish and the X is an SUV.  Following that where the numbers are sedans and letters are SUV's, the S should be an SUV, but it's a sedan.




The 3 was intended to be Model E, but Ford of course owns that. All for Lord Elon's vision of a S3XY lineup of vehicles.


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## Eric

quagmire said:


> The 3 was intended to be Model E, but Ford of course owns that. All for Lord Elon's vision of a S3XY lineup of vehicles.



The man himself is a giant tool but you gotta love his cars.


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## Eric

Here's what I ended up with, due in March sometime. Until then we'll just be a one car household, just glad to be out of that existing lease and have a clean slate.


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## Cmaier

Eric said:


> Here's what I ended up with, due in March sometime. Until then we'll just be a one car household, just glad to be out of that existing lease and have a clean slate.
> 
> View attachment 10534




Good luck! I’ve been driving the same model s since 2013, and it’s a lot of fun (when it works)!


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## DT

Eric said:


> Here's what I ended up with, due in March sometime. Until then we'll just be a one car household, just glad to be out of that existing lease and have a clean slate.




Wow, nice you went from 0-100 pretty quick 

So you opted for the upfront FSD purchase?  Or is that just a "Your car has this hardware ..." message, I don't recall.   FYI, you can add it later, and you can also opt for a month-to-month (for $199)

Mine had zero issues as delivered.  Paint was very good, panels were aligned well within my expectation (interior and exterior).

You've seen pics of my car, it has an MSM exterior, neat color, it's medium metallic gray (even though the name is "silver"), with a neat pink/blue flake in the bottom coat, and it has this very subtle blue on the tint coat (it's a two stage paint).  When I got mine it was a paid upgrade color (white was the only freebie),  looks like this up close (those are reflections, not paint aberrations):


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## Eric

DT said:


> Wow, nice you went from 0-100 pretty quick
> 
> So you opted for the upfront FSD purchase?  Or is that just a "Your car has this hardware ..." message, I don't recall.   FYI, you can add it later, and you can also opt for a month-to-month (for $199)
> 
> Mine had zero issues as delivered.  Paint was very good, panels were aligned well within my expectation (interior and exterior).
> 
> You've seen pics of my car, it has an MSM exterior, neat color, it's medium metallic gray (even though the name is "silver"), with a neat pink/blue flake in the bottom coat, and it has this very subtle blue on the tint coat (it's a two stage paint).  When I got mine it was a paid upgrade color (white was the only freebie),  looks like this up close (those are reflections, not paint aberrations):
> 
> View attachment 10535



Right, getting out of my lease was the biggest win of this whole thing. I had negative equity wrapped up in it and this leaves me with a clean slate to I can start from ground zero now.

I may opt out of the FSD in the end but if the payments (and down payment) stay at what they quoted me I'll likely just purchase it with the car directly, it's a feature I'll probably want. I'll see at the time of purchase though, it's nice to know I'll have the option.

Yeah man, yours looks awesome and one of the factors in me making this decision.  For now, we're down a car for a couple of months but we're happy to be out from under the lease and will use this time to recoup from this payoff. Hard to believe the used market is so hot, making this all possible.


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## DT

Cool.  Yeah, I was upside down on a lease once, rolled like $5000 of upside down equity from a previous car, when I finally got back to a clean slate, it was an awesome feeling.

With a March '22 delivery date, you're very possibly looking at some of the new '22 updates.  Tesla doesn't really do "model year", they incrementally update all the time, so you might get:  faster MCU (main infotainment computer), rear dual pane glass (they added this to the front for '21),  a Li-Ion 15.5v battery (finally ...), a few more odds and ends:


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## Eric

DT said:


> Cool.  Yeah, I was upside down on a lease once, rolled like $5000 of upside down equity from a previous car, when I finally got back to a clean slate, it was an awesome feeling.
> 
> With a March '22 delivery date, you're very possibly looking at some of the new '22 updates.  Tesla doesn't really do "model year", they incrementally update all the time, so you might get:  faster MCU (main infotainment computer), rear dual pane glass (they added this to the front for '21),  a Li-Ion 15.5v battery (finally ...), a few more odds and ends:



Good to know, looking forward to a car that actually updates it's OS rather than having to purchase a new car every time. Any chance this could arrive sooner than they estimate?


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## DT

Eric said:


> Good to know, looking forward to a car that actually updates it's OS rather than having to purchase a new car every time. Any chance this could arrive sooner than they estimate?




I've seen people's EDD (estimated delivery date) move around, I was a bit of an anomaly, I went from order to sitting in my car in 9 days


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