How to get out of an auto lease?

March 21, 2018 3:15 PM

I leased a car last year. Now I'm moving overseas. What can I do to get out of the lease?

Last July, I signed a 3 year lease on a Toyota Prius. A month ago, I was given the opportunity to transfer to my company's Munich office (which I jumped at). Now I'm in a pickle with the car. What are my best (and hopefully cheapest) options for getting rid of the car?
I'll be headed to Munich in October of this year. Would it be better to do it on the sooner side? I can live without a car for the next 6 months, and the savings on car payments and insurance would be nice. Or should I wait until the last minute?

posted by Cat Pie Hurts to Work & Money (5 answers total)

Mose leases give you the option to buy the vehicle at any time. This is rarely financially a good deal for you, and sometimes you need to pay a penalty, but if you've got good credit, you could check out your credit union/bank and get a regular old car loan to buy yourself out of the lease. Then you could turn around and sell the car to pay off the loan. This is not necessarily cheap.

There are also a couple online exchanges where people offer to take over leases. There's usually a lease transfer fee and you usually have to pay the new lessee some cash in the deal to make it attractive, but it happens, especially if you have very low milage on the car.
posted by furnace.heart at 3:24 PM on March 21, 2018

If the car's current value is near to what the dealership can sell it for, they may take it back. I had to break a lease and the dealer took the car back at no cost to me, but I also leased another car from them. Might be worth asking what the cost would be to turn it in early.
posted by cnc at 3:31 PM on March 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Have you looked at swapalease.com?
posted by JoeZydeco at 5:15 PM on March 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Lately I've been looking at assuming a lease and investigating the options on swapalease.com, leasetrader.com, etc. Priuses go quickly and without much discounting.
posted by carmicha at 8:05 PM on March 21, 2018

Response by poster: I'll check out leasetrader and swapalease. Thanks!
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 12:19 PM on March 22, 2018