The term, pull-ahead lease, refers to an offer by a car dealer or car company to allow a car lease to be ended early, as part of a deal to buy or lease a new car. Typically, the deal pays off the final few lease payments on the old vehicle, while offering special incentives on a new vehicle.

Consumers who want to take advantage of a pull-ahead lease program should take a bit of caution.

First, while it may seem that having your final few payments made for you is a good deal, make sure those payments haven’t been added back into the deal in the form of a higher price on the new vehicle. At best, the value of those payments may simply be the discount that you would have gotten on the new car anyway. In other words, the “special” deal may not be so special at all.

Second, although the dealer may make it sound like he’s taking your vehicle as trade (he’s buying it from the lease company to sell on his used car lot), this may not be the case. In fact, he may be simply returning it to the lease company on your behalf, although a little early. This means you may be billed later if there was excessive wear-and-tear or mileage. At worst, you could be billed for the final few payments that the dealer failed to pay.

Finally, make sure you don’t have trade equity in the vehicle you’re trading. That is, check the trade-in market value at Kelley Blue Book (kbb.com) and NADA Guides (nadaguides.com) and compare that value to the lease-end purchase option price in your lease contract. If the value is significantly higher, you have trade value that can be used as credit toward the purchase or lease of the new vehicle.

Be aware that all pull-ahead car lease programs are designed to create new business for dealers and may not always be good deals for customers.