[FNV]

How difficult was it to get out of a lease. Do you have to go through BMW with regards to paper work?
Has anyone got out of their lease by buying another new vehicle and that dealer ended up take over the lease?

If anyone had any experiences with getting out of leases please advise.
Just curious to see how it works.

[wkjeepsrt8]

It can be tough.

I asked a similar question a few weeks ago. Scroll through a few pages and it should still show up.

[montrealm3]

www.leasebusters.com

I just got out of a lease (2006 BMW 5 series with 16 months left).

350$!

[aspiring335]

Originally Posted by TB

How difficult was it to get out of a lease. Do you have to go through BMW with regards to paper work?
Has anyone got out of their lease by buying another new vehicle and that dealer ended up take over the lease?

If anyone had any experiences with getting out of leases please advise.
Just curious to see how it works.

You have a few options, the least financially damaging of which is to find someone to take over your lease (e.g. via www.leasebusters.com, as suggested above). In this scenario the party assuming your lease has to pass credit approval with BMW FS, and you both have to attend a dealership to sign the paperwork.

If you are trading up to another BMW, your dealer will usually buy out your lease, but often at a substantial cost to you (i.e. the difference between the amount owing on the lease and what they give you for the car as a trade). If you're near the end of your lease you can often reduce this liability to zero, but that's highly unlikely if you're only a few months into the lease. One of the advantages here is that the GST helps you -- i.e. the dealer can work with you on the amount net of GST, whereas if you're paying off the lease yourself your buy-out will be the amount owing plus GST.

Another option is to sell the car privately, at which time you can pay off the amount owing on the lease (pretty sure there is no penalty from BMW for doing so) and hopefully have positive equity (i.e. you sell the car for more than is owing on the lease). See my point above about GST, though, and keep in mind that if you are only a few months into the lease it's very unlikely that your car is worth more privately than is left owing on the lease.

Long story short: IMHO Leasebusters is best early on in the lease; private sale is best towards the end of a lease.

[FNV]

Thanks for the replies and good info.

[cdheaven]

selling the car privately would probably be the quickest and easiest way but chances are you will DEFINITELY lose money. its very rare to have positive equity in a lease. I highly contemplated selling my car to carmax and paying off the lease, it would have been very simple, but i would have lost like 3k