Lease Trading: Easy Ways to Get Out of a Car Lease

Leasing a new car can be a valuable choice when you can’t afford to buy, but your lease term can be upward of 36-48 months. You might change jobs, change your lifestyle, or experience a change in income during this time, and will need to break the lease. Since most lease contracts require you to pay a large termination fee, you’ll need a better strategy to make the change.

Lease trading is one option, a chance for you to hand over your car lease to someone else without incurring the fees of lease termination. All you are doing is transferring the lease, and instead of searching for someone by placing a classified ad or hunting down a potential buyer on Craigslist, you can turn to an actual bidding site to manage the entire process. Lease trading sites make it easier than ever to find a legitimate party to take over your lease so you can spend less time searching for a buyer, and more time finding your new car.

What is Lease Trading?
Lease trading is a legal transfer of ownership of the lease that gives all rights to a completely new lessee. Trading your lease means you can will hand over all responsibility of the lease to another person – this includes any charges for maintenance and other fees that may be imposed once the lease expires, and the new lessee is well aware of the trade-off. The benefit to the lessee is not having to pay any down payments or fees to start the new lease, and the biggest advantage to you is simply having the lease off your hands.

How Can You Trade a Lease Online?
With the increase of car buying and trading online, lease trading has also become an easy process. Sites such as TradeCarLease.com and LeaseTrader.com are two of the leading websites that manage all trades; all you do is post your car lease and personal information and the site lists the necessary information on its database. The listings enable people looking for a car lease to contact you directly through the site.

Picking Up a Car Lease on a Lease Trading Site
If you’re looking for a care lease instead, you can search the database of available leases by make, model, monthly lease payment, and state of your car location on each site. This is one of the easiest ways to find the right match for your budget and car preferences, and each profile page lists the lease payment, months remaining, lease end date, and original down payment. You can contact the seller directly from each site to learn about the condition of the car and other details you may need.

Warnings About Lease Trading Sites
Almost every lease trading site works as an advertising or bidding site, and is not responsible for the actual trade or transaction. This means you are conducting the transaction at your own risk – just as you would if you had posted an ad on Craigslist or a community bulletin board – so it may take some time to find a legitimate lessee. To make sure everything is accurate and up to date, you will need to contact the person listing the lease and manage all paperwork on your own, or through the dealership.