Whats happens if you pay off a lease early?

Ask your lease company for your early buyout price. For that price, you will own the car and do anything you want with it.

The buyout price might be more than you expect. Because of your low monthly lease payments, you have not quite kept up with the depreciation of the cars' value. As a result what you still owe on your lease to buy the car could easily exceed the car's current market value, meaning your would have to take a loss if you used the car as trade on another car.

Financially, you would be better to keep the car and finish the lease. That way if the car's market value at lease-end is less than the lease-end residual or buyout price, you can simply return the car and let the lease company take the financial hit.

You might as well finish the lease and then decide to buy it.

No benefit for doing it sooner.

You need to talk to the lease company and see if they offer the option for an early termination and purchase of the vehicle. But that will be silly to buy the car if you intend to trade. It's probably going to cost you more than it's trade in value.

Now ending a lease early usually costs money as well. Reason is that finance company has worked out the deal based on what the car is going to be worth after the three year lease it up. Now because cars depreciate fastest in the first your of the contract, it's lost more value than you have paid in lease payments, so they are loosing $$. If you really want out, you may need to come up with several thousand dollars to "balance the books".

Your best option is to simply keep the car, keep making payments, and stick to the contract you signed up for. End of the lease you can either turn the car in and walk away, or take up the offer to buy it, if it's a good deal.

Main thing to keep in mind. It's NOT your car. You are basically just renting it.

The first thing is you need to be aware of how the math works so you can decide if this makes sense.

And even if you are willing to pay some extra costs, say $1000 is OK, but what if it is 4 or 5,000?

What company is the lessor?

Options:

1. Pay all remaining payments and hand the car in early. Additional Cost = payment X 12 months. I don't think there will be any extra fees, but you have to get everything in writing, BEFORE you make any moves. Read your original contract word for word. They should be happy to get full payment and the car early, but that does not mean they won't try to charge you a bunch of early termination fees.

2. Negotiate a prepayment. This depends on the miles on car, trim, level, color, local market demand , etc.This is mainly if lessor is Hyundai. They may say pay 70% and we will call it done.

3. Ask for buyout. How much if I want to buy the car today? Note this is 100% negotiable. Just get EVERYTHING in writing. You need to know the current market value of the car, private sale and dealer trade in. If you pay 15,000 and think the car will trade in for 14,000, but actually you are offered only $12,000 as max, then you just took a $2,000 haircut.

4. If you are buying a Hyundai, they may be more flexible. But they may not offer any discount until say 6 months before the end of term.

5. My suggestion - Ride it out till the end of the term and hand it in. Sure you want a different car, but it can wait.

you are asking several questions (1) you need to contact the leasing company to see if you can pay the lease early + what the amount would be (2) if you did that and wanted to use the vehicle as a trade in for another vehicle, I can guarantee that you will lose $$ all the way 'round (3) your better options would be to: keep the vehicle til end of lease, then purchase something else or pay off that vehicle and keep it