Taking Over a Lease vs. Buying Used

[kinggimp]

I have a friend who is looking to end his lease early on a 2011 Mercedes C63 with 8,000 miles. He was paying about $1,070/month and has already made about 13 payments. The buyout at the end of his lease is about $38k.

So my questions, I suppose, are:

1. Would the most cost efficient method be to simply sell my current car and take over his lease payments? And if so, how would that happen? Would I have to go through the dealership to have the paperwork done?

2. Should I let him return his lease to the dealership, buy his car as used from the dealership, and trade mine in? Would the dealership even do this?

Thanks in advance for any useful advice, as I'm not every experienced in car buying

 

[GreenFrog]

Well, you're talking about two completely different scenarios here:

1) You're taking over his lease. This is not an uncommon practice and there are a lot of third party websites that let you find people who want to get out of leases. www.swapalease.com is one of them. I'm not entirely sure what the process is in transferring leases, but I don't imagine it's that complicated for the person taking over the lease. There's definitely going to be a fee involved with transferring it so I guess you can negotiate that with your friend. I'd say skip the third party and go directly to the dealer to transfer the lease. Remember, you won't be owning the car. You'll simply be paying for the depreciation.

2) This is the least cost effective, from what I see. First, when he returns the lease, the dealership is going to mark the car up to make a profit by selling it to you. So, already, you're paying a premium. The second whammy is your trading your car in. You're always going to get less than what it's really worth.

I say sell your car privately to maximize profitz and take over his lease.