If your lease is winding down and youâre thinking about keeping the car, the price is already settled. Itâs printed in the contract you signed three years ago. Anything the dealer stacks on top of that number at the buyout counter is a charge for nothing.
New York spent two years proving it.
Between March 2024 and May 2025, 15 Nissan dealerships in the state paid more than $1 million in penalties and refunded over $4.5 million to more than 3,100 customers. What they did was simple enough to explain in one sentence: when a leaseholder came back to buy the car, the store either bolted a âdealership feeâ or âadministrative feeâ onto the deal or wrote a higher vehicle price on the invoice than the lease allowed.
Then the attorney general went up the chain. On June 3, 2026, the office announced an agreement with Nissan Motor Assurance Company, the finance arm that actually owns those leased cars, covering all 45 Nissan dealerships in New York. NMAC is auditing every store, mailing refund checks on a rolling basis through 2026, and refunding the extra loan interest customers paid when they financed a price that was inflated in the first place.
âBuying a car is a major financial decision, and New Yorkers should not have to worry about dealers using illegal junk fees to drive up the price,â Attorney General Letitia James said.
Hereâs what they donât tell you at the counter. The buyout figure isnât an opening bid. Regulation M, the federal rule behind the Consumer Leasing Act, requires the company that leased you the car to disclose the purchase price at the end of the lease term right there in the lease document. Itâs a number, agreed in advance, and it doesnât move because the used car market got hot.
The math is worse than the sticker suggests, because most people finance the buyout. Say the store adds a $500 doc fee and $1,200 of âprice adjustmentâ to a $22,000 buyout. Thatâs $1,700. Roll it into a five-year loan at 7% and you pay about $2,020 for it, roughly $320 of which is pure interest on a fee that shouldnât exist. Run your own version on our loan calculator.
This is dumb, and New York just made an entire brandâs dealer network give the money back.
Do this now. Before you call anyone about a buyout, get the lease out and find the line labeled purchase option or purchase price at end of lease term. Thatâs your number. When the store sends a buyout worksheet, go line by line. Sales tax, title, and registration are legitimate. A doc fee, a reconditioning charge, or a market adjustment on a car you already have in your driveway is not. Say no, in writing, and ask them to reissue the worksheet.
If the dealer wonât move, call the lease finance company and ask whether it will sell you the car directly. Many will. If youâre weighing whether to buy out at all, our auto loan guide walks the trade against just handing the keys back, and best personal loan rates is worth a look if youâre comparing financing.
And if youâre a New Yorker who bought out a Nissan lease, you donât need to do anything. The check is being mailed to you.
One caveat. The enforcement here is New York only. The disclosure rule is federal, so the price in your lease binds wherever you live. But in the other 49 states, catching the padding is your job.
How Candid Yak makes money. Some of the products we write about pay us if you apply or sign up through our links. That never changes our verdict, our rankings, or the numbers in this article. We call a bad deal a bad deal whether it pays us or not. Some brands shown in our comparison tools are placeholder examples while we finalize partner agreements, and we label them as such.