I don't see how it would be any different than an apartment, but I had a colleague who did it all the time. he would come back from lunch and tell us about the new car he's getting, and for lower payments, yet he would only be 12 mos. into his 36 mo. lease. No clue how that works, but it seemed to me that he never got rid of his high payments, I mean the payments were relatively high, but he would get a newer car, with a lower payment...(meaning the payment was lower, but relatively high from an absolute perspective)

 

Obviously the cases where you can trade in a leased car early and come out ahead are pretty rare. This is because the lease payments are based in part on the predicted residual value of the vehicle, or basically how much it is "worth" once the lease term is over. If you have a very nicely maintained vehicle and significantly lower miles than your lease terms allow, you may have this situation - rarely. In this case, your trade-in value would be higher than the payoff amount of the vehicle, which is made up of the residual amount plus whatever fees are associated with terminating the lease at the time plus the remaining balance you owe on the lease. So, if your residual is, for instance, $25,000, and you still have $5,000 in payments to make, and there are lease termination fees of $1,000, you would have to pay out $31,000 minus the trade-in value of the car, which would essentially be at most $25,000 unless you have lower miles and better condition than predicted. Assuming the residual and trade-in value actually were the same, you would still come up short $6,000. Of course, these numbers are made up, and I don't think the fees were that high when I did this.

This is basically what happened to me with my 2015 Camry I traded in to get my IS - I was only about a year and a half into the lease and still owed quite a bit on it. So, I had negative equity of around $4000 to deal with. If I had waited a while and paid it down a bit more, I could have made a lower down payment on the IS and gotten similar payments per month.

 

You need to understand what a current buyout/payout balance is for your lease vs what the trade in/resale value of the car is currently. As arentz noted, generally leases are tough to jump out of early due to the underwater nature of program. Then it's up to you whether that's worth it or not. If you were jumping to a new lease in the Lexus lineup they may be willing to pull you ahead a few months or waive a few months, but that's not super common for Lexus I believe.

 

Lexus Financial offered to waive my last 3 payments of a lease if I came in and bought a new Lexus. Maybe they are more flexible these days, Just saying for info.

 

Pretty good advice already posted here, dealers are currently a bit short on (good) Used Cars
so you should do a little homework on current values for your car and confirm the payoff with
Lexus Financial. Now go narrow the choice of larger Lexi and let the Dealer plug in the numbers.
Roger00 is correctly referring to the Payment Waiver Program that forgives up to three (3) payments
and ought to help with the math.

 

You still owe $5938.80 (= $494.90/month x 12 months). If you wish to end your lease 12 months early, this is what you owe to the leasing company.

Your residual value is $26,854.57.

If you wish to sell your car now, if you earn less than $32,793.37 ($5938.80 + $26,854.57) on its sale, you are losing money. If you earn more than that amount on the sale, whatever is left over after you have paid off the lease ($5938.80) is yours.

If you wish to end your lease early, in order to buy or lease another vehicle, you still owe $5938.80.

You can roll the owed amount into the price of your next vehicle, in which case your new car is suddenly $5938.80 more expensive.

Or, you can pay out the remaining payments on the lease (pay $5938.80 out of your pocket and return the car) or, if you are lucky, have the dealer buy out your lease (buy out for at least $32,793.37 and the dealer owns it in order to sell as a used car). In either case, you will be free and clear of the lease.

If you can wait longer (closer to the end of the lease), you will owe less. This will make it easier for you to pay the lump sum to end the lease early; it will also make it easier and more likely for the leasing company to waive the remaining payments (provided you lease another car from them).

 

Wait just 6 more months. Lexus has a 6 month lease pull forward program. Plus this will get you towards clearance time where you can get a better deal on new vehicles.

 

I have a couple of buddies that routinely do this with their MDXs after two years of a three year lease. They get into a new MDX of the same trim level in another 36 mo lease at the same, or lower, lease payment and no out of pocket costs. Each time they get all the lease factors and make sure deal is good one. The dealers call them when they can get lease money incentives on new vehicles, and low volume of used vehicles. The dealer can get credit for the sale of a new unit, and make some money on the sale of the used MDX.

I don't see how the math would work after only one year into the lease, unless lessee got taken to cleaners on the initial lease.