As you can see, more and more people have had a decent experience getting leases through lease trading. I will say this, this is NOT for everyone. But it will save you money if you are a bargain hunter and have the patience. Here is the email I got from Ashe about his experience through Swapalease.com. You can always read his entry here on RIDE with G’s Facebook Page.

Hi G, sorry it took so long to write about my Swapalease experience. I have been searching for a Black on Black G37x Coupe with premium package for a while at different dealerships and I was convinced that one couldn’t be had for under $550/month with at least $2k down payment. I happened to be browsing Swapalease one night and located a 2008 G37 Coupe about 20 miles from where I live. I paid the $30 for a 1 month membership and got the owners information and gave him a call. He had a Black on Black G37 Coupe with premium package that was slightly over the mileage for the year by about 2000 miles. I figure if I go over the 39,000 miles its 20 cents a mile (2000 x .20 = $400 that I would owe at lease end). This was still less than the $2k I would have had to put down on a new car. The car was immaculate except for some slight scratches here and there. He had placed a $4000 down payment last year and lowered his payment to $430 a month. He had 25 months remaining on the lease. The process to transfer lease took about 4 weeks and with no cost to either party. At the end I spent about $100 to transfer the lease including getting a new key and FOB (he had lost the spare), Swapalease membership and $5 to transfer the registration and plates into my name.
I included a picture of the car.

The key here is how much he would have spent at drive-off vs what he actually ended up spending when it was all said and done. The same happened with  Jennifer’s Swapalease story. These types of websites are really great to find deals on cars where people overpaid and have to throw cash at it in order to make it enticing enough for other people take over them. Plus you save yourself those inception fees, which nowadays its in the thousands!

I have not done a full-scale evaluation between Swapalease and LeaseTrader, but from initial reports from users, we are looking about the same concept; you pay a subscription fee to get access to contact information. It seems Swapalease has a lower subscription fee ($34.95) vs LeaseTrader ($39.95) for buyers. In any case, I will probably do a more in depth write up of these two services. Hopefully representatives of these two sites are open to answering some questions.