Diminished value on a leased vehicle?

Hey guys and gals, does anyone know if you can claim diminished value on a leased vehicle? I’m following up from my last post of someone else running a red light and hitting my front driver side wheel/door. It looks like my truck will be able to be repaired, but obviously the value of it won’t be as much as it was before. My lease ends in May 2025. I plan on buying the truck out. Am I able to claim diminished value or does Toyota Financial receive the compensation?

 

You don't own the truck, TFS does. Therefore, you are not entitled to DV.

 

If the value has legitimately diminished then leverage that when negotiating your intended buy out?

 

Yes, you can claim it, I did. The other person/Insurance company whom hit my truck, had no idea it was a lease.

 

absolutely you can claim it - I had this happen to a Porsche 911 I was leasing. A lost mattress on the highway did about $27K damage. Resale value on that car dropped like crazy - I was thankful it was a lease - I'd have never been able to sell it for what Porsche offered it to me for at lease end.

 

I’ve never dealt with this but am curious. How do you prove diminished value? And how do you put a number on it?

 

Bring their insurance company (normally your insurance company will not pay you diminished value if it is a claim on your policy) multiple sources, KBB, TrueCar, dealers etc. that show the difference in pricing for similar vehicles with a crash on their CarFax vs. no crash reported....

 

Since when can you negotiate a buyout. It is a fixed value per the contract.

 

So your saying you committed insurance fraud and took many that was rightfully not yours.

 

That's what I was also thinking. I thought that it was already on the contract ahead of time. And if you were planning to buy out after the lease, whether you bought it out at the end of the lease with 10,000 miles on it or 150,000 miles on it, you pay the same amount. And those 2 vehicles (in theory) would be 2 totally different vehicles/values at those opposite stages. But the price would be the agreed upon price. So I am curious on this. I don't currently lease but just for my own knowledge, I'm trying to understand.

 

@cromag27

 

So severity of the damage does not matter?

Anyway, this whole concept sounds like a crock of shit.

 

We negotiated a lower pre determined buyout. Asked for a little bit lower number, they said no, we said great car but we’re going with a different manufacturer/dealer. And like magic they cut the price by a few hundred dollars. They didn’t want the car back. This was before Covid , different situation now.

 

I just read a couple of articles on it. It is very complex and depends on how the lease is written. Did you inform the lease company of the wreck? It can be complicated. But is appears most of the time the answer is no.

 

I called Toyota financial yesterday and the chick who I was talking to was a complete dumbass and had no idea what I was talking about and I could barely understand her with her accent so I just hung up. I’m gonna try to call again today haha

 

This sums it up. Basically, some leases are written that the person leasing the vehicle can be responsible for a diminished value if there is an accident. The Person would be billed for the lessor value once the lease is turned in. Most leases just dictate that the vehicle must be turned in damage free.

I did a DV claim on a lease where the leasing company had no clause about DV. I claimed it because I planned to buy the vehicle out at the end resulting in the vehicle being worth less once it became mine.

 

Read your lease document... no need to have Toyota read it for you.

 

Thanks for the smart ass comment. Doesn’t really do anything for me. I’m a full time LEO, my wife works full time, I’ve got a 20 month old, I don’t have time to dig through a bunch of paperwork and read line by line when I can talk to someone on the phone whose job it is lol

 

Kinda off topic, but you should never lease a vehicle.

 

That’s nice