Check with the dealerships to find out what they do with the cars when someone drops their vehicles off at the end of their lease term. I work for VW (maybe Volvo dealerships work the same way) and the process for lease returns is: the customer drops off the lease vehicle at end of term to our dealership. Volkswagen of America, Inc comes by and picks up the lease return vehicles. Vehicles are taken to auction. If customer wants to keep car, then that is done through VWoA. Normally, lease rates are calculated from the MSRP, residual, money factors, and so on. KBB most times will price a value too high so there is also edmunds.com or intelliprice.com. Contact the internet managers from different Volvo dealerships. Try to build a relationship with all, nothing major- just keep in touch with them. Talk to them about what you have going on and see which one may have the best offer for you. This is also good to do toward the end of the month. Goodluck.


MALMO99

83 240
92 745
96 850
98 V70

Is the car still under warranty? That can affect the price a LOT

The warranty is worth at least $3000 to $5000 in the KBB.

A few years ago. I was wondering why "95 850s seemed to carry reasonable prices.

So I plotted the book value of a 850 GLE sedan for 7 years.

The loss of value for each year was something like

Year 1 - $5600
2 - 4500
3 - 3200
4 - 2400
5 - 1700
6 - 4600 ???
7 - 1300

Why was year 6 so high? - the warranty ran out. Try this analysis for your brick.

IMHO the best value in a used car would be one that just went off warranty - BUT was well cared for and had all and any repairs done before the warranty ran out.
--
'96 855R, 95 855, '95 854, 90 744TI 377,000 miles on 7 bricks

My O1 V70 lease ended in September of 2004 and Volvo Finance had no interest in negotiating the end of lease cost. Other then the customer loyalty cash I would have to pay what was on the initial lease agreement. I've heard this changes from time to time so you may see different results.

Let me know how you do. I found the dealers in my area (Central NJ) to be pretty poor when it came sales support.




--
Geo

It's the same as buying a used car, except you have driven it for a while. Get prices from KBB, etc. and pretend you don't know this car from another on the used car lots. Just let the dealer know that you know what it is really worth. It's going to be almost 5 years old in June, and the way the resale values have been lately, go low. The dealer would rather have the prospect of you buying it than sitting on their used car lot for a few weeks.

Klaus
--
98 V70Rawd(101Kmi), 95 854T(85K mi), 75 164E(173K mi)