End of Lease Offer - $7200 Less than Residual

We turned our '13 FFE lease in yesterday with 22500 miles on the clock. Dealer called today and offered to sell us the car and re-register it for $9200. Equates to about $1000 less than a 3 year/31,500 mile lease on a 2017 from the same dealer when they finally become available. What would you do?

Get the 17. Bigger battery, DCFC, Sync 3, Warranty.

Warranty is the only concern I have about buying it back. After three years in the car, I know that the bigger battery isn't critical. Final plan is for two AWD Teslas, so buying this car provides some level of flexibility in exiting it that leasing a 2017 wouldn't include (short of paying off the balance).

that's expensive

given that they are offering less than 10k for my 2016 with 18k miles as trade in

The way I looked at my end of lease, what do used FFE's cost? Can I buy a used one for less than what they want to buy out my lease. In my case, the answer was oh heck yeah there were a lot of used cars for a lot less than my lease buy out. So that's what I did, turned in the lease and bought a used FFE.

The only thing to remember about a used car, you'll have to pay sales tax, transfer fees for the plates, title transfer, and possibly a Doc fee at the place you buy the car. And you might have to buy tires.

Your lease end may be $9,200 all in, no other fees. And you might get about another 10,000 miles on those tires - maybe maybe not. You know the tread depth.

Only you can answer the question about what used FFE's cost in your area - or an easy tow away within 200 miles.

The other positive with a used one - you might trade up and get a California car that is in better shape than what you have now. If you live anywhere other than a sunshine state, your car has rust on it already. And it rattles more than a California car - you've driven over a lot more pot holes than they do.

Ended up letting it go. Couldn't justify the purchase when there are newer model year CPO cars out there for less. Will be keeping an eye out to see where it pops up though.

Good luck trying to follow the car. I mean that in a kind way - I hope you can watch where it goes if that's what you want.

It might be harder to find than you imagine. Very shortly after you do the lease return, Ford will remove it from your MyFordMobile account. You won't have access to the car location. You could track it via the VIN number, but you would need access to auctions. The car may or may not be auctioned near where you turned it in. The dealer won't try to resell it because the cost is far higher than what they could get for it.

The car will likely disappear into the ether.

EVA said:

Good luck trying to follow the car. I mean that in a kind way - I hope you can watch where it goes if that's what you want.

It might be harder to find than you imagine. Very shortly after you do the lease return, Ford will remove it from your MyFordMobile account. You won't have access to the car location. You could track it via the VIN number, but you would need access to auctions. The car may or may not be auctioned near where you turned it in. The dealer won't try to resell it because the cost is far higher than what they could get for it.

The car will likely disappear into the ether.

Click to expand...

Unless some other dealer purchases it and it shows up in their inventory. Mine did that; a simple google of the VIN showed that it only went a bit south into Indiana before being sold.

It was picked up at the dealer last Friday and sold at auction on Monday. As a result, I'm guessing it did auctioned nearby. Now just waiting to see if it shows up in someone's inventory, and at what price...