2011-02-19

Car maintenance and repair are important aspects you should give careful attention to when you opt for a car lease. Some leasing contracts offer car maintenance at a fee that is included in the overall payment scheme.

Regardless of whether you purchase a car or go for car leasing, you have to keep maintenance and repair costs in mind. If your car leasing agreement comes with a full-maintenance provision, then you should ensure that your dealer carries out the maintenance and servicing at the scheduled intervals. The servicing should follow the stipulated manufacturer guidelines. Also check to see if the car service record has been stamped following each service. Get the damages sustained by the vehicle during usage repaired immediately.

Make sure that tyre pressure, coolant and radiator levels, engine oil levels are checked at periodic intervals. Get scuffs and chips to the car’s paintwork repaired quickly. In most cases, a touch up job will suffice. The windshield is your car’s safety component- get chips, cracks and star-breaks in your leased car’s windshield fixed immediately. This will prevent the damage from extending to the entire windshield, in which case an entire windshield replacement may be required.

2011-02-19

Buying a luxury car can cost you a small fortune. Luxury car leasing is the more affordable option. Leasing is a fairly straight forward process where you can acquire the luxury car by making fixed payments over a fixed lease term. When your leasing period comes to an end, you return the car to the leasing company.

Some lease agreements may also offer you the option to buy the car or trade it for a new one. When you lease a luxury car, you don’t have to worry about its depreciating value when you start putting the miles on it. This is not the case when you purchase the car, where you have to deal with the depreciating value of your asset.

From Aston Martins and BMWs to Jaguar and Porsche branded cars, leasing companies generally make a large range of luxury cars available to individual and business customers alike. Used car leasing may also be offered, in which case you can keep costs even lower.

When you initiate a car lease, keep certain things in mind. Make sure you do not exceed the mileage allowance stipulated in your car leasing contract. Maintain your car well to prevent end of lease charges for excessive wear and tear. Also make sure you buy gap insurance for financial security in the event of an unfortunate accident where your luxury car is totaled.

2011-02-17

When you lease a vehicle, you should be aware of the end of lease costs you are required to pay. For instance, if you don’t buy the car you have to pay a disposition fee. This refers to the costs the financing company will have to pay to resell the car and associated administration charges. Be aware of the disposition fee in advance to avoid extra costs at the end of the lease term. You may not be able to negotiate this fee when your lease period ends so make sure you take care of this aspect from the outset.

The mileage allowance provided will be clearly mentioned in your car leasing contract. Make sure you do not exceed the mileage limit or you may have to pay excess mileage costs at the end of the lease term. You are charged extra for every mile you exceed. At the time of signing the lease agreement, negotiate the mileage allowance with the dealer if you feel that the imposed limit is small.

Wear and tear is another aspect you have to keep in mind when you sign the leasing contract. If the car you lease suffers damage then you will be responsible for the repair costs. The damage caused will be assessed by the dealer and deemed normal or excessive.

Adhere to all the terms of your car leasing agreement and have a clear idea about the end of lease costs.

2011-02-17

One of the important decisions that you will have to make when you lease a car is whether or not you want to buy the car at the end of the lease term. Your car leasing agreement will give you the option of purchasing the car and tell you what the likely price purchase will be.

This purchase price is dependent on the car’s residual value and includes a purchase option charge. The residual value of your car is the value it has retained at the end of the lease term. For instance, for a residual percentage of 60% on a car costing £40,000, the estimated residual value at lease-end is £16,000.

If the car you have leased has not depreciated in value by much, then it is a good idea to purchase the car. This is because you will get to own the car at a price that is lower than the market rate for a car in this category.

Keep in mind that that the residual value of the car cannot be negotiated at the end of the lease term. Once agreed upon, you have to go by the residual value mentioned in your car leasing contract regardless of the current industry values. Keep this in mind when you make the decision to return or buy the car at the end of the lease period.

2011-02-17

Car leasing has become a popular alternative to an upfront car purchase. If you are looking to lease a car, you should be aware of how the process works and the costs involved. Also, like any other financial deal, you should try to negotiate a good car lease.

Start by negotiating the car’s selling price. Keep in mind that this may be a bit difficult given the fact that your dealer may have already lowered the price to lure with a lower monthly payment. If the selling price cannot be negotiated, see if the dealer is willing to offer you an extra or accessory with your car.

Ask the dealer for rebates or incentives that lowers your capitalized cost. See if you can negotiate the disposition and acquisition fees with the dealer as well.

The dealer calculates your monthly lease payment amount, based on the mutually agreed terms. Make sure you do your own calculations as well, using the residual value, cap cost and money factor that the dealer uses.

Think twice about dealer offers like credit insurance, extended warranty or any add on service. Sign the lease agreement only if you are comfortable with the car leasing terms and payments.

2010-07-28

Last year many regular travelers to Spain got a shock when all car hire prices when through the roof. We are not talking 10% or so here, but in many cases 3 time more expensive, depending on how long you keft it before you tried to book. Even this year, those who left it late to book Spanish car hire found it expensive, although not to the levels of last year, plus those who though ahead, were happy that early prices had dropped again. Speaking to a car hire firm, they explianed that it was mormal to lease the cars they hire out. Unfortunatly last year leasing companies sold a lot of their stock to put money back in the business and stopped offering 6 month lease deals just to cover the busy period.
As car hire firms could not lease in high quantities over summer and low quantities over winter they just cose to play it safe and lease few cars, making a huge shortgage appear. Of course the big international names buy their own cars, but even these were caught out reducing their stock. It is interesting however how the car lease market affects the short term hire market also, with smaller companies throughout Spain.

2010-06-23

It is estimated that most new purchases of executive vehicles are bought though some lease or private contract hire scheme and of course this will in most cases happen at the main dealer for that car manufacturer. So when you are standing at the front door of the dealership how do you know you are getting the best or cheapest car lease deal?

The truth is at this point you don’t. Car deals come and go and often you need to be in the right place at the right time to capitalise on the best options. Fortunately the internet can help you do the research, from what is available at the dealership before you even walk in to other online options where leasing brokers do the deal for you.

There is an issue here is some cases though, not all motor dealerships advertise what their leasing rates are or monthly premiums through their websites. In many cases they need the customer to walk through the front door and talk to a salesman, before you know what deals are available, giving the upper hand to the dealership who now can convince you why dealing direct is best.

Speaking to brokers you will find that in most cases (not all), they can do better than the dealerships, either because of cheaper interest rates, or just lower commission and charges to whoever sells the vehicle.

2010-05-14

Hunting down the right car lease deals in the UK may not be as easy as you think. There are many directories, the best known is car leasing companies which has several other websites out there dedicated to car lease. Then there is the famous Lings Cars, who appeared on Dragons Den to get money for her leasing website projects. But it doesn’t complete the full picture.

This is because you never really know if there is not someone else out there cheaper, even though these sites may state they are the cheapest. The fact is humans need to know who is the cheapest, rather than taking someone’s word for it and will search for that even cheaper car lease deal. We are sure that in many cases they will not necessarily get a better prices and those using Leasebam will be able to confirm individual prices made from real people. the point is until a customer has 3 prices to compare form three different companies, only then are they likely to act and buy.

This is how many find getting car lease deals a bit more complicated than it needs to be as there is only a few sites out there giving several car lease prices from one form and Leasebam is one of them.

2010-05-03

You may have guessed that Coches is Spanish for cars and Espania well, that is Spain of course, so we are not expanding Europe to this sunny country and seeing how they see car lease.

On searching fior the above term for Spanish only websites, instead of getting the number one car lease company in Spain we ended up with a consumer advice magazine called Consumer Eroski  with information on leasing (eroski is the same name as a supermarket out there, but don’t know if related), which pretty much proves there is some sort of car lease market out there.

Then we end uop with another site with more information on leasing called viajoven information on leasing de coches, again load of information but actual company showing up with vehicle prices. Then eventually we find that the term coches renting is probably more appropriate and find autodescuento which allows you to fill in a form to get a cheap price on the next lease or rental deal in Spain, bravo! However when we change the search term to Coches Rental up appears some of the many Spanish holiday hire firms out there. So if you are Spanish and in the car lease market, don’t expect the internet to give to instant information.

2010-05-03

We though we would look at how car lease companies around Europe and possibly the world saw car lease and how they marketed their services and prices of their vehicles, so we start today with Germany. Normally searching on Google will attain the biggest companies and so what we found surprised us a little.

For example take ALD Finance a German lease company, the site is all set up to market the company and not a price in site, unlike the UK where vehicle price comparison is king.

Then we find this is not unusual with Direct Lease being the company that appears first in the search and has what can only be called a very basic uninformative site.  Moving down the list we eventually get to company we all recognise, with is the German arm of Sixt, however although this is found under car lease, there is still the ability to hire a car for the short term as most people know the brand SIXT for. This shows maybe a lack of initiative and possibility a major opportunity to market within the German car lease sector, or maybe this is the culture and anything as brash as advertising cheap lease deals on the homepage is not seen a professional.