The Best Leased Car to Sell for a Profit

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The Best Leased Car to Sell for a Profit

© Courtesy of Volkswagen USA

Car leasing is a relatively new way for Americans to drive. For most of the history of the American car, people paid cash for cars or borrowed money for them. A few decades ago, car companies put together packages so that people could lease a car without owning it. At the end of the lease, the car was returned to the dealer.
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Car prices have skyrocketed in the past year. One reason is pent-up demand from the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Another is low car loan rates. Yet another is that car inventory has collapsed because of a lack of semiconductors that run auto electronic systems. This problem has even shuttered some assembly lines, most recently Toyota’s. The price of used cars has risen as new car inventories disappear.

One of the options people who lease cars generally have at the end of a lease is to buy the car at a prefixed price.
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iSeeCars reviewed 10 million cars for a new study. They looked at what the “average three-year-old used car is worth 31.5 percent or $7,019 more than its residual value estimated at the beginning of its leasing term.” So, the three-year-old cars used for the comparison were 2018 models. iSeeCars Executive Analyst Karl Brauer commented:

Dealers calculate a vehicle’s residual value based on its projected depreciation, and this value is locked in at the beginning of a car’s lease. With used car prices at record highs, the market value of leased cars is substantially higher than their residual value, which means that lessees can buy the car at the end of their lease term and sell it themselves for a significant profit.

The leased car people can buy back and sell for the highest profit is the Volkswagen Tiguan, which has a profit level of 61.3%, or on a dollar basis, $8,677. The Tiguan small sport utility vehicle gets fairly good ratings. This includes an 8.1 out of 10 from U.S. News for the 2021 model and 7.3 out of 10 from Edmunds.

These are the 15 best leased cars to sell for a profit:

  • Volkswagen Tiguan: 61.3%
  • Dodge Charger: 55.9%
  • Chevrolet Camaro: 52.9%
  • Nissan Altima: 49.4%
  • Volkswagen Passat: 49.3%
  • Chrysler 300: 49.2%
  • Nissan LEAF: 48.3%
  • Chevrolet Malibu: 48.2%
  • Hyundai Elantra: 47.9%
  • Mazda MAZDA6: 46.8%
  • Kia Forte: 46.7%
  • Jeep Compass: 46.4%
  • Jeep Cherokee: 46.3%
  • Nissan Versa: 46.1%
  • Ford Expedition: 45.8%

Click here to see which is the fastest-selling car in America.
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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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