i don't know whether leasing a car is different from austria to germany but here in austria you always own the car if you lease it and the residual is predetermined in the contract. so the lease holder cannot decide to take the car back at the end of the lease and he is also not allowed to increase the residual according to market values. a lease here is like a (cheap at the moment) loan with the big advantage that VAT and NOVA are not paid to the government fully upon acquisition but they are paid monthly at certain rates. so upon resale the car is still attractive to a buyer from outside austria. it turns out that here expensive cars are almost always leased instead of paid in cash for this reason. i made the big mistake and paid  my ferrari in cash, which then made it very hard to sell. 

peter