$2K back from BMW at end of lease
 

Let me be clear on this, BMW Financial Services did not give me any money back. I sold my leased vehicle back to a BMW dealership.

I was at the end of my three year lease on my X5M. My buyout was $51k. I noticed that BMW X5M's all over the country were selling for a lot more than than with a lot more miles than I had (approximately $23k miles.)

My car also needed new front tires.

Had I not done a little leg work, even though I was well under miles, had I just turned in my X5M to a BMW dealership, they would have charged me for new tires.

But I knew I had equity in the vehicle so I decided to sell the car to BMW rather than trade it in. I actually sold it cheaper than I should have but I had two private sales fall through and I didn't want to pay registration and possibly even get hit with sales tax during the transition.

But regardless, on I got $2k for giving my leased car back to BMW.

Moral of the story: If your buyout is considerably less than the fair market value of your car, don't just hand it over, sell it back to them.

But don't also get clouded about what you think your car is worth... It's probably worth a lot less than Autotrader would have you believe.

Wow. It's really been three years since you got it? Time sure does fly when you're having fun....and I know you've been having a LOT of fun! :thumbup: :beerchug:

That means they screwed up the residual calcs on the lease. Was the lease from BMWFS?

how do you "sell" the leased car back to the dealer? I have an E90 with the lease running out this coming summer of 2013, and would like to do the research on that possibility, at least to avoid being "taken"...

What are you getting into next, B-Line? Any passing comments re the X5M experience?

Cheers,

Nice - did the same thing with my X6 35i a while back.

@TerminatorX5 - think of it as buying out the car and then turning around and selling it. You owe your lease payoff (residual + any outstanding payments), and if the car's worth more than that, you can sell it and pocket some cash. If you sell to CarMax or a dealer (as trade-in), the dealer payoff may be less in your state (different state to state) because you don't pay tax. Smart thing to do if you're in that position.

I'm going to return my 2009 SLK tomorrow and my residual is way higher than what the car is worth, so this time it didn't work out for me -- all depends on the vehicle and market conditions. But it doesn't hurt to stop by CarMax and find out what they'd give you for the car.