Do you think it's ever a good idea to buy a car that's under lease?
And if so, when would you say is that ideal window to do so?
You typically cannot purchase a leased vehicle until the actual end of lease. Some manufacturers like BMW and Cadillac, Mercedes and Porsche will sometimes do a “pull ahead” type promotional where you can buy or trade the current lease 6-9 months early of its contract date.
in general though, the only way I ever buy a vehicle off lease is if its residual value is substantially under its trade-in and retail value. 9 times out of 10 the residual value is 10-30% more than the vehicle is actually worth on the retail market.
For instance, during the vehicle shortage in 22/23, I had a truck in my company come off lease. The original lease was a 39 month lease with a buy out or residual cost at the end of the lease of 36,000 dollars. The original MSRP was 69,0000 dollars. Luckily for me, this truck only had about 11,000 miles on it since it’s only used to move heavy equipment around. The low miles really jacked up the retail value, along with the fact you couldn’t buy a new one for less than 90k now. So the retail value on my truck was around 47k at the lease end….so for me it was a no brainer to buy the truck out of the end lease because the truck was actually worth about 11k MORE than the residual buy out value. Even though the truck is worth more, I still only have to pay the original 36,000.00 contract balance.