Question

My lease for my 2017 Ford Escape is up in October. I'm going to be WAY over my miles so I plan on purchasing it. I dont mind since I do like the vehicle. Now. since I'm buying it, is it required to put a down payment on it? I have heard it both ways so hoping some of you have had experience.  

Answer 1

We went through this with my husband’s leased car. Unfortunately, the price they sell it to you is for the miles it should have. So my husband paid for a car with 45, 000 miles when it actually had 75, 000 miles. So we were forced to overpay for the car, or we’d need to pay the over miles fee that came close to 6, 000 and trade the car in. Since we didn’t have 6K available we overpaid for the car. Because we paid more than the car was valued at, our lender required us to purchase “gap insurance”. If the car were to be totaled today insurance pays only for the value of the car, and we owe more than that because we overpaid. so the gap insurance covers that difference. All in all we got totally screwed because my husband entered this lease before I knew him and went way over in his miles. Our APR on the car is ridiculous too. I will celebrate the day we can finally afford to unload this mistake!  

Comments

@maziemazlack oh man! Thank god I wont be that far over! Sorry that happened to you!  

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I'm gonna be about 8, 000-10, 000 over.  

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@gouge You might want to use a downpayment to cover the “gap” since they will sell you the car valued at the 8-10, 000 miles less price. This way you avoid the gap insurance which is a giant wast of money if the car never gets totaled.  

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@maziemazlack I def want gap insurance because if my car is totaled and I have negative equity, I dont want to pay for a car that i dont even have