Escaping a car lease gets easier
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You must also register a car in your locality, which
usually involves a fee. For information on fees in various states,
check out Swapalease.com. If you're interested in buying a lease
from a seller who is some distance from you, there will be transportation
charges involved, which buyers and sellers typically negotiate.
You may also want to pay for a mechanical inspection, which typically
runs at least $100.
While many individual leaseholders seeking to dump their leases post ads on lease trading and other sites, car companies and dealers also list leases. You can find almost any model and make available for lease buying. Terms range from as short as five months to as long as five years. Because consumers leasing cars generally prefer loaded models, most leased vehicles available for trade have desirable options.
Buyers need good credit
Buyers need to be prequalified, so they will pay a fee for a credit
check. Would-be buyers without good credit are usually out of luck.
In most cases, consumers who are prequalified through the lease-trading
companies are qualified by the car companies to assume a lease,
but in some deals, that isn't the case.
"As we've worked with a lot of different leasing
companies, we've learned what they look for, so we put together
a process that will get most buyers with good credit approved,"
says Sergio Stiberman, CEO and founder of Leasetrader.com.
"But because it is harder to get approved to lease a vehicle than buy one, in some cases preapproved buyers aren't ultimately approved by the leasing company," he says.
The trading process
Lease-trading Web sites list thousands of cars available for lease
sales. Interested buyers can approach interested sellers and then
both parties are free to work out deals on their own. Motivated
sellers may sweeten deals -- especially if they have cars with high
payments or high mileage or they have unpopular brands -- by paying
lease-transfer fees that are usually assumed by the buyers, paying
to transport cars to the buyers' locations, making cash payments
for the buyers to take over the leases or paying a couple of months
of lease payments for the buyers.
Once the buyer and seller come to an agreement about
the terms, the lease-trading site -- if one is involved -- handles
the paperwork, which includes getting the buyer approved by the
leasing company and transferring the lease from the seller to the
buyer. The parties need to work out details such as transferring
the car from seller to buyer.
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