OT: Lease Transfer Experience

Just finished a lease transfer and assumption and said goodbye to my Boxster S tonight (feeling a little sad to see her go!). Rather than pick up some old threads, thought I would share my experiences in a new thread. The lessor was Chase Auto Finance and I found a taker through leasetrader.com. I paid a nice cash subsidy to make it an attractive deal for someone. First, Chase does release the original lessee � I am completely off the hook and they will look solely to the new guy. Second, Chase is unbelievably SLOW � 5 weeks from start to finish (or �almost finish�), even though I FedEx�d everything immediately and called them constantly to speed it up � though they did say upfront it would take 4-5 weeks. Actually, we are still waiting for the final documents and DMV papers but the new guy is already in their computer so we finished the deal. [If the new guy happens to show up here and read this � Thank you for your unbelievable patience!] Third, I do not recommend leasetrader.com; received few inquiries and they did not respond to email inquiries. I would have tried swapalease.com but didn�t as I did find someone early on. The rest of this describes Chase�s process and will bore anyone not dealing with Chase: 1. Call and ask for a credit app for the �buyer�; only by mail (they won�t email, Fax or FedEx). 2. Buyer returns credit app. Wait (in my case) three friggin weeks to get approval (guy had super good credit). Then they mail the approval and lease transfer assumption agreement (�LTA�). 3. LTA is poorly drafted and raised a bunch of questions that had to be clarified for buyer�s understanding and satisfaction. 4. Return LTA and wait for Chase to sign it. Chase had it 15 days ago and after a week I found out by calling persistently that the buyer is now shown as lessee in their computer. Still waiting for confirmation copies (which they supposedly mailed 5-6 days ago but not yet received), and DMV papers promised to be mailed a week after that. On the other hand, the process did work, and I am happy I did it after almost parting with a small fortune to buy my way out. Chase will take a nice loss in 22 months when they get the car back and that is one of the major benefits of leasing.

While reading this I had felt as if I wrote it under an assumed name last night while I was sleeping... at least Chase is consistent. I just transferred my 2001 C4 lease to someone in LA. Feel lucky that the process only took 5 weeks, it took me 3 months - no joke. Everything we did we FedExd so the turn around time from the buyer and myself was as fast as possible. One thing to note, Chase will not transfer a lease from NY to anyone in NY - just a side note as this may apply to a few other states as well. The fact that I got out of my lease 10 months early is good, but holy crap was it a painful experience, so much so, that I'm not sure I would have given the car up if I would have known up front. I used swapalease.com and they were ok, I had a few hits on the car and established the connection more than that you can't ask for.