I leased my first car - a Mazda CX-5,Grand Touring about 3 years ago.

I negotiated a 15,000 per year limit and have about 40,000 miles on it now. I'll probably be a couple thousand short when I'm at the end of lease in January.

The residual on my contract is $17,100 and looking at auto trader, I see similar Year/Make/Trim/Mileage selling for a min of about $22,000. My dealer has one for $21,988.

Based on that a couple of questions:

• My wife loves the car (so do I) so, we figured if we need to buy it for $17,100 that is a good price considering similar car is selling for $22,000+ right?
• I also read that my dealer doesn't own the title, it's Mazda and I may be able to get a lower buyout direct from Mazda. Anyone have experience with that?
• What should my expectations be when I approach my dealer? They probably want me in another lease and get my vehicle back - correct? I'm not sure if I want to release because I'm not sure if I will be remaining working close to home.
• If I choose to buy the vehicle, they dealer has to offer my the residual value - right? Are there any fees I would get added on if I bought? I don't think I would pay sales tax again would I because I paid that during the lease of the vehicle? (not sure if I did or didnt)
• The car has been in two not at fault accidents, one a deer ran out in front of us and a second a guy hit my back bumper. I had the car fixed and the car overall is in excellent condition - maybe a minor scratch here or there. I've had auto people tell me how well I've kept it.

Basically, just trying to understand my best options and any advise, tips, 'you might want to consider' stuff, etc would be appreciated!

Thanks
-B

 

I'm curious; what year CX-5, what were your total upfront costs at time of signing and total of monthly payments at the end of the 36 month term?

 

I just bought out my CX-5 lease (like a week ago). My wife wanted the car and we needed a bigger one, so I know what you're going through. I'll try and answer some of your questions in red below.

• I'd say yes, depending on trim level and options. Mine is a 2016GT AWD with tech (same mileage limits as yours) and our residual was higher by $2500.

• Correct, the title is held by the lending agency, in my case Mazda financial services (I.E. - Chase bank). Barring something exceptional, I do not believe you can change the buyout, you agreed to a set residual at lease inception. (At least I could not).

• Forget the dealer, you don't need them to buy out the lease. Look on the back side of your lease payments. There's a number to call financial services directly. Once you enter in your account/car information, an automated system will tell you exactly what you need to provide to buy the lease out, including the total cost.

• Again, I'd skip the dealer here, you don't need them. YES! You will absolutely have to pay sales tax again to transfer the title in your name. You paid taxes on the monthly payments, but not on the amount that has yet to be paid. The amount of tax you will owe is based on the finaly payoff amount and the sales tax for the county in which you live. I hate to scare you buy my tax was almost $2k...payable by check to the DMV.

• You could finance the remainder of the payments and that will allow you to spread out the taxes by the number of payments you will make? Not sure if the accident lowers the residual or not, but i'd look into that as well. Although, they will likely ding you for that either way. One up side is, if you just buy it out, Mazda won't even look at the car (at least they didn't care to look at mine). Good Luck!

 

How much have you paid in payments over 3 years + interest? You might find you actually have paid TWICE the cost of a brand new one. Leasing is for mugs.

 

Not sure what the purchase price was when you leased the vehicle. You would need that to gauge where you are at. Assuming you pay 300 a month for lease thats 10,800.00 paid to dealer plus whatever you put down when you signed the lease. Invoice on the car around 28k and MSRP was 29k. So if your payoff is the 17k plus tax id think thats pretty good.

If thats the case then whats the fuss about leasing a vehicle? It would seem that leasing isn't as bad as they way I was brought up to believe. I suppose there are people that negotiate a bad lease agreement just like negotiating a bad purchasing deal. I work with a guy that doesn't negotiate the price of a vehicle when buys. My response to that is Really. How do you not. I was once told to pay 400 for document fee. I got up and started walking out b/c i thought it was ridiculous and the salesman was in disbelief. He said its only 400 dollar and my response was if its only 400 then he could pay it.

 

First off LOL good on you for walking out over $400. That's something i would do. I hate the way these dealerships try to sucker you in.

Some insider knowledge from someone who was a car salesman

New vehicles ( other than TRUCKS ) tend to only have about $1,000 to $1,500 profit margin for a dealer. Find out what they paid for (invoice) then take off the incentives from that, then work up from there.

Used vehicles have lots more room. ( Can be anywhere from $2000 to $6000) so work real hard on those

Also enter at the end of the MONTH, end of the night, end of the four QUARTERS ( because they have to hit quotas)

As for Leases and financing. Their goal is to get you to pay lots of INTEREST. The longer they can keep you in that the better.

My goal is to purchase outright my next car. Not sure it will be a mazda because from what i can see they are OVERPRICED for what they give you.

Second i have noticed a large number of complaints about their GLASS on CX5s being thin and cracking and exploding ( look up carcomplaintsdotcom)

 

I leased my 2015 CX5 GT through Mazda (Chase Bank). It didn't make sense for me to put money down on a new car to replace one that I really, really liked so I decided to buy out my lease. That saved the lease termination fee of $300(?). I looked into financing it through Mazda finance but the interest rate was higher than I could get from other lenders, even though I am a Chase employee. They just make it easy to do and hope you won't think about too hard or shop around for interest rates. I ended up financing through another regional bank. The dealership wanted me to come in to see them to handle the buyout but I'm pretty sure it wasn't because they missed me or wanted to do me any favors.