Buying My Lease - Something seems suspicious

I don't think the dealer wants me to buy. They are making it very difficult. For instance, I already got financing through my credit union, but they are telling me that they still need to submit the financing through them because it 'protects us'. What the heck does that mean?

That means that the dealer will make money through the finance. Go to a different dealer!!!!
 
You do not have to trade in your lease at the purchasing dealer.

Heck, you could go to any dealer, Tesla, BMW, Hyundai, even Honda, and trade your leased car towards another vehicle, and the dealer takes care of all the paperwork, they just buy out your lease and get the pink for themselves.

You could even go to CARMAX and have them buy out your leased car, especially if you have some positive equity between value and lease payoff.
 
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You do not have to trade in your lease at the purchasing dealer.

Heck, you could go to any dealer, Tesla, BMW, Hyundai, even Honda, and trade your leased car towards another vehicle, and the dealer takes care of all the paperwork, they just buy out your lease and get the pink for themselves.

You could even go to CARMAX and have them buy out your leased car, especially if you have some positive equity between value and lease payoff.

Correct. RUN, do not walk, away from that dealer. He is trying to take advantage of you. A fifty mile drive should be well worth it to deal with someone more honest.
 
I'm looking to buy my lease and have been pre-approved via my credit union.

When I told that to my dealer, he said the rates are going up next week - here is the list. I told him that didn't matter, I'm grandfather in at the rate I got for a couple of weeks. He said 'we can try - but I can't guarantee that interest rate.'

I called Greylock to confirm and they said yes, just get us the bill of sale, we will cut the check for you to bring to the dealer.

After going back to my dealer, he said that the financing part has to go through them per their policy. I told him I don't want another application to be ran due to it will impact my credit score. He said it won't.

I also pointed out that Mazda sent me the paperwork and I could technically just send them the check.

Something doesn't seem right with the dealer. Thoughts?

-Brian

I'm not surprised by your dealer. If he does it your way, he would just be doing some paperwork for you and not getting paid anything for it. If he can convince you to finance through them, he can make a few bucks. If he can convince you to buy or lease a new car, he can make a few bucks more.

If you're certain you want to buy out the lease using third party financing, I suppose he could just tell you to go talk to Mazda. But naturally he wants to run your credit in the hope that he can match or beat your credit union, or at least get close enough that the convenience of letting him take care of the buy out is worth it to you.

One thing I don't understand is why you would need to change plates if you buy out from Mazda. Plates should be transferrable. The only hassle on your part for dealing directly with Mazda should be a trip to the local motor vehicle office.
 
It's a thing with leases. Bought our other car after the lease. Needed new plates.
 
It might be a state by state thing. A relative recently bought out her lease in MA and was able to keep the plates, and got credit for excise taxes paid under the old registration as well. I don't have any personal experience buying out a lease though.
 
Here in California, I also kept the same license plates from lease to purchase.

Out of my 40 cars over the decades here in California, I only ever had to get a new plate when one was stolen, or the previous owner kept his plate because of a personalized vanity plate.
 
I'm sorry but my experience with buying & selling cars in the past which were 4 different Toyota's is that CARMAX is the worst place to go have a car appraised.

Oh yeah, I didn't mean to endorse Carmax as an excellent place to sell a car. Personally, I've had good and bad offers from them. Years ago, I did sell them my Jetta GLI because they offered me a stupid amount more than any other dealers. When it came time to sell an Altima Coupe, CarMax offered me more than any private parties, and then I just went across the street to the "We'll pay $500 more than CarMax" Chevy dealer, who reluctantly wrote me the check. Of course, they had no idea what to do with my Volvo V70R and offered me literally half what it sold for privately a week later.

My point was just to get it appraised somewhere, so that you have a sense for whether it's worth anywhere close to the residual/buyout, and CarMax is nothing if not easy to deal with for someone who may not be that interested in driving all over town for a dozen offers and waiting for the same number of folks from Craigslist to come by and kick tires. If you think you can sell it for more than the residual, then that's unexpected equity you might as well pocket instead of just turning in the lease or writing that buyout check.
 
So how do I calculate what a lease payment should be ? After all rebates and incentives ?

You get all the numbers from the dealer, which they're not often eager to share without some prodding:

MSRP (retail sticker price)
Residual (usually as a percentage of the MSRP)
Rebates/lease incentives (which reduce the sale price)
Customer cash incentives (which are treated like a down payment)
Money factor (Usually a small decimal like .00038; if it's a percent like 1.29%, then divide the 1.29 by 2400)
Lease term (e.g., 33 months)
Sales tax (which varies by state in amount and how it's calculated; some as a percent of the monthly payment, some of the sale price of the car, etc.)
Acquisition fee
Any other fees (like state registration, dealer doc fees, etc.) that you wish to capitalize as part of the lease
Your down payment (which ideally is $0)

I think that's about it. Then you find yourself a fancy online lease calculator and enter all of those numbers. It should produce a monthly payment you can expect to pay in that scenario. But beware: leases are tricky beasts. Banks and dealers move numbers all over the board for various reasons (sometimes deceptive, sometimes benign business purposes), so a lot of calculators may not always accommodate everything they give you. Like when they do the L&M sales tax swap, or they don't really distinguish between top end discounts and "customer cash" type incentives. Three years ago, I had never leased a car. So I read a lot about it, tried to understand the math, and made some spreadsheets with formulas to help me figure out what I need to pay (and whether someone is trying to screw me in the F&I office). It's just math, and the hardest part is just understanding which numbers go where in the equation.
 

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