Can You Trade In a Financed Car?

Wondering if you can trade-in your financed car for a new leased or purchased vehicle? You absolutely can! You can also often trade-in a leased vehicle or buy it out. Remember, though, just because you trade it in doesn’t mean you won’t still owe money on it. That’s where the finance experts here at University Mazda, may be able to help, however. While there’s never any guarantee when trading in a financed car that the dealership will be able to roll over your old loan into your new monthly car payments, it’s always worth looking into, especially if you need a larger or newer vehicle with the latest safety features, but are still making payments.

How Does Trading In a Financed Car Work?

There are several steps to trading in a financed car in or around Rio Rancho. We’ve broken down the process in what we hope will prove easy to understand steps:

1. Find out how much you owe on your current car. Usually, you can find this on your monthly statement.
2. Use our online trade valuation tool to estimate how much your current car might be worth. Then take your vehicle into us for an actual trade-in appraisal so you can get a trade-in offer.
3. If your trade-in offer exceeds your auto loan amount, congratulations — you won’t have to worry about your remaining payments, you can use the money from trading in your car to pay it off.
   • Say you owe $10,000 on your car in Santa Fe, and the dealer offers you $11,000 to buy the car. In this case, you’ll be able to pay off your vehicle and be left with $1,000.
4. If your auto loan is worth more than your trade-in offer, you have what’s called negative equity, or are essentially “underwater” on your loan. You can pay off the remainder in full before buying your next car, or talk to the finance department at University Mazda about potentially rolling over your loan.

What Does “Rolling Over” A Loan Mean, Anyway?

Rolling over a loan is when a car dealership pays off the remainder of your prior car loan. Though financially, this will result in higher payments as you’re basically paying off two cars at once, for some people who require a new vehicle before their current car is paid off, it can enable them to upgrade their vehicle.

University Mazda is Here for Your Car Financing Needs

Whether you’re looking to learn more about buying vs. leasing or are curious to hear about about Gap protection, the University Mazda finance center is here to help make plain the many aspects of automotive financing and help you get pre-approved for a car loan as quickly and affordably as possible.