Well after 3yrs I still love my maxima and have decided to buy it out for a number of reasons (mileage, etc).

Here's my situation
2k1 maxima se

I have a purchase option that is $14,036.88
I spoke with the dealer and they said that I will have to pay the purchase price, sales tax, motor vehicle fees and a dealer financing charge of $495! Is that normal?

To me the dealer financing charge seems really high. What should I do question it futher?

$14, 036.88_____They claim it's not a negotionable(sp)
+ 842.16 NJ Sales Tax
125.00-Estimated NJ fees (rebate if less)
495.00-Dealer/Financing Fee/????
____________
~$15,500.00

I am really new to the lease buyout scene so any pointers are appriciated. BTW I orginally leased through NMAC.

 

I spoke to the lease return person at East Coast Nissan today he ran a credit check and said we wouldn't have a problem financing me(My mother originally leased the car)So I don't know what the interest rate is going to be. But based on the numbers above does anyone know what I should expect as a monthly payment for financing?

I would like a 36 month financing and probably will put down $1500-$2000.

 

I live 5 minutes from East coast nissan, man what a small world. You are talking about the one in plainfield on rt.22 right ?

 

That's the one, I'm not too fond of their service dept though! For some reason the SALES Dept guys always SEEM so much nicer!

 

Anyone have any suggestions for me? Does that fee for the financing seem offly inflated. Also my lease contract says the buy out + taxes + a $150 fee. I just want to see if others have gone through the buy out process.

Is it worth going to banks to see if they will give me better rates....I do need to resolve this by friday of next week. I'm going to meet the finance guy on monday.

 

I someone has had to have bought out nissan lease?

Feel free to voice your experiences!

Thanks Robert

 

I don't know what your payments would be but I borrowed $16k for 60 months @ 3.9% and my notes are $296.01 a month. Maybe you could use the payment calculator on the Nissan web site.
http://www.nissanusa.com/buying/PaymentEstimator

 

Thanks for the reply, I'm looking for people who may have leased and bought the car after the lease. I was really interested in how much extra fees should run and what are average financing rates.... I found out that my credit score is like 680 or so(not bad for 22yrs old)... so I should have average financing rates.

 

East Coast Nissan, bought my car from there too. Here's the deal with buying out your lease.
1. Get another rate from another bank!! Speaking from personal experience at that dealership, I was quoted 4.45% from another bank, East coast wanted to offer me 8.1%..after a lot of "Let me speak to manager"...they matched my rate.

2. Do you know you are basically paying the dealer twice for fees you already paid at the beginning of the lease? (registration,etc) That price seems way too high for your car if its over 36K miles

3. How much will you be paying extra for over milage? It might make more sense to pay the over milage fees and get another maxima with lower miles somewhere else.

Just weigh out all your options...remember the dealership never loses!
Good Luck

 

Thanks Maxn2theMax, I will go to Commerce, my local bank on monday morning for a quote with %. Yeah I gotta buy no choice.. I got 86K on my max and i'm allowed 36k. .15/mile no dice!

Anyways yeah I know about dmv but what can I say, they did say they would send me a refund check for the remander of the dmv fees.

 

Just out of curiosity how's your credit? I really don't know how I stand in that respect. I know I won't get as good of a rate if my score doesn't meet the particular requirement. The lease return guy said my score was 681, last month Verizon told me it was 822? So I don't know what the deal is but I was just wondering where the cut off is for the better finance rates.

 

Don't let anyone "tell" you what your credit score is. I would go out to equifax.com and purchase your report so that you go in the door informed. As we all know, a dealer will tell you whatever they have to in order to make more $$$. The same can be said for most banks.

Good luck.

 

you can go on www.carpoint.com, plug in different numbers and see what your payment is going to be. It seems that you are concerned with your dealer screwing you over w/$500 fee. There is noone on here that can actually tell you about this. You gotta read your lease agreement, specifically the part on what fees will be involved @ buy-out. You are driving way too much and the lease was not right for you the 1st time. Now you will end up making payments on a car that is 150K mi+ and 6 yrs old if you continue driving that much.

 

Y2KMaxGXE-R, thanks for the link. I am only interested if anyone on the org has bought out a lease from NMAC and has payed a $500 dealer fee while in the process. I know the lease was not my best option but it was a decision that was made when I got the car two days after my high school graduation. So yes I'm young and am not an expert in buying and leasing but I feel that my decision was not too bad.

I knew I would be keeping the car after the lease so that's why I wasn't concerned about the mileage. Now that I am buying I don't want to make the wrong decision and pay more than I have too.

And yep I probably will be driving the max at 150K and more like 5yrs but who cares buy that time I will be out of college with my masters and will be making good money and will buy from the start.

So I don't feel that the lease was bad for me it allowed me to get a $25,000+ car as I was going to school full time.

 

If it were me, I'd walk away and tell NMAC see you later. They'd love for you to buy it out--they'd roughly make yet another $1100 off the transaction, talk about having cake and eating it too!

If their SE has every option incl. Auto, it'd be worth about 13,500. They've already made enough money off your lease payments imho, why give them more?

I think it's important to look at things objectively, not emotionally. You feel like it's your car, since you are the only one who has had possession. But it is NMAC's car, sorta like an apartment. Don't waste even more $$$ to hang onto it, cut the strings. If you want to buy a car, then buy it and live with larger payments (much larger). If you want to lease again, then do so, just remember you start from zero 36 mos. later.

 

But that freedom to drive the $25K car now has you trapped into paying whatever they want to demand out of you, or you have to pay the $7500 in mileage penalties. So you are now effectively trapped by the freedom that you signed on fo r3 years ago.

If the lease terms specify a $150 fee, why has the fee now changed to $500? Have you asked the dealer about it?

 

At least you'll feel like you'll be driving a more expensive car because you'll have put in enough money to have purchased a BMW 3 series by the time everything is done

Leasing is great if you don't really care about cars and are willing to pay a little extra money to drive a new one every couple years. Leasing is a horrible if you plan on buying the car.

Either way you're stuck. The excessive mileage has really screwed you and now you really don't have much of an option other than to buy the car. I guess you could pay off the mileage and lease end fees, but then you'd only be left ~$7000 to buy a used car assuming you're financing $16K.

 

Well I did get things worked out at the dealer, they reduced the fee to 150 and additionally we worked out an extended warrenty for 12k for an extra couple of hundred. When the finance manager mentioned it I figured it was worth it too get because I have a bunch of little things I would like to have fixed.

Now as far as the lease goes I am not soo upset about the extra $ because I use my car for work and do get paid by the mile ($.34). I would say I drive at least 15K/Work related a year so that's like 5Gs/yr and you figure gas so maybe like 3Gs/yr towards the max.

Now of yes I know the max cost me more by leasing but it's only money and my max has never let me down... except the MAF dieing on the PKWY in the left lane, but it was all good I unplugged it backedup to the last exit and took back roads home.

Thanks for all your input I ended up getting 9% for 3 years so my payment went up like $30 a month but it's all good.

Now I will say I have learned a valuable lesson in car buying this is my third car (78 Vette(project car), 99 S10 Xtreme, and then the Max) by far the max is the most reliable and comfortable. I have also think that I have became a safer and better driver because of the max.

 

I also have to say that I have been reading many posts since I got the max in 2k1 here on the ORG and I have learned so much about my car. I like having the ability to diag and repair small jobs.

 

Good to hear that it worked out. One bit of advice- try to join a credit union through work, or even a community credit union. My interest rate is less than yours, even with a fairly high debt to income ratio, on my 97 I30. I think 6.5% or something. It is through a credit union.

 

What's the difference between a credit union and a bank? Part of difficulties of this transaction was that I had to have my mother on the loan for insurance reasons and she brought my credit down. But also probably saved my a few grand on the insurance.

 

I was going to recommend walking away from a $15k 01 Maxima, because that would be paying too much, but if the alternative is $7500 in overage fees, well then you're kind of at their mercy unfortunately.

 

I don't knwo the technical differences, but with a credit union, each member is basically a shareholder in the institution. Because of this, you often get better interest rates than at a conventional bank. i was 2% lower there than at the closest competetor at a regular bank.

 

M<y 2 cents worth. I've been in both banks and credit unions. Banks are in business to make money. Credit Unions are member owned and look out for it's members. If you are credit worthy and able to pay back your loans, the credit union will gladly loan you the money at decent interest rates. A lot of banks charge account holders for every little thing they offer.

 

........

 

Please do yourself a huge favor and walk away from the deal. Check out what the trade in value of your car is...probably something like 11k or so. Now why in the world would you want to pay 15k for a 2001? Your really getting a bad deal, not to mention you leased it to begin with so you already paid too much. My suggestion is to look around and find a nice 2k2-2k3 for about 15k and buy that for 60 months.

 

I was thinking the same thing

 

See the way I look at it, 13 grand is 13 grand. Forget about the lease on the 2k1 that's done, what is the best way to spend 13 grand today (do you even have it, how is it being paid?)?

Leasing is tempting, we're all human--2k4 X3 2.5 = $329, 3.0 = $349, it was on tv yesterday. I know, all these threads are going to emerge saying the deal doesn't exist. Anyhow, we all know that with a huge downpay a BMW brand-new is in the $800+/mo. range, so that's why so many lease.

Sometimes there is no alternative--in Brooklyn NY I heard a 2-bedroom noisy apartment near 8th Ave. is $1400/mo.--if you have to live there, what can you do but pay rent? But a car is different--there are things called 5 yr. old Hyundais and Kias that are great starter cars. Fully depreciated, cheap, and RELIABLE! my .02

 

I posted this thread not to see if it was a good idea to purchase my maxima or not but to make sure I got the best deal that I could get on the lease buy out.

Frank go out and trade your max for a kia and let me know how much you enjoy it. I drive ALOT and need a comfortable ride so the kia is not an option.

I'm needed to buy the max asap, yeah I waited till the last min for personal reasons. When I get back from vacation in July I'm gonna try and refinance the loan and try to get a better rate than 9%.

I appreciate all the positive useful comments that have been posted. I look forward to talking to you guys soon, since I still got the max!

 

9% is really out of whack, like a Sopranos interest rate, the avg. rate on a used car is currently 6.5%. Was anyone with you when you agreed to 9%?

A couple things you can do are either take out a home equity loan, or if you don't own a home, there are tons of credit card checks going around now, where you can pay other loans off for around 4.9% or so fixed for the life of the debt. If you do the latter, make sure there is NO transaction fee. The catch they say is that if you are ever late on any payment, the rate goes up to a higher rate, such as 9.99-14.99. Pay on time, and there is no catch.

Cars are a complete waste of money, you can really get into debt with these things. But as I've said many times before, if it makes you happy, then maybe that's worth something.

 

Keep in mind that I am a 22year old college student, that is establishing credit. The lease was in my parents name and now it's in mine. Yeah I know 9% is a little high but I'm gonna try to refinance later.