Car Lease Deals Or Steals?

There are many car lease deals on the market today-you see them almost every time you watch television for any period of time. However, before running out to sign a car lease, it is worth a close examination of the fine print to determine whether a lease is a deal or not.

In many cases, the advertised lease is what prompts consumers who are interested in leasing or purchasing a new car to go to the showroom. However, usually the advertised lease deal is not the car that most customers actually want to own. In many cases, the advertised deal is a stripped down lower-valued car. Additionally, the advertised lease usually also includes only the minimum number of miles-usually 10,000 miles per year. For a 3-year lease agreement, this adds up to only 30,000 miles, which would be extremely difficult limitation for most individuals.

For most people, adding the features that would make the car into a car they would really like and would meet their needs results in adding at least a few hundred dollars to the monthly lease payment, turning what seems like a really good advertised deal into an unattractive and burdensome prospect.

Another aspect to consider is a required deposit. In a lease contract, the monthly payment is actually a rental payment, since in actuality leasing is simply renting a car for the length of time of the lease contract. A deposit is an up-front rental payment that cannot be recouped if something happens to the car.

One of the benefits of leasing is that very often it results in a person being able to drive off the lot in a new car they might not otherwise be able to afford if they purchased the same car. For people who regularly want or need a new car, the benefit of being able to get into that car often outweighs any potential disadvantages to leasing.

Many leases are for a few years and at the end of the lease, you need to either turn in the car and find another car to either purchase or lease or, alternatively, keep the car but pay off the balloon payment due at the end.

For people who use their cars for business, they may find it possible to expense a monthly lease cost for their taxes or write it off as a business expense. This can be an especially attractive prospect for individuals who really need a current car for their job, like real estate agents.

When a car lease is advertised, the emphasis is on the potential monthly payment amount. However, once a customer is in the showroom, what usually becomes obvious is that the car that is advertised is not the car that the lease will ultimately be written on. If this is the case, then it is important to understand the deals of the lease, including the limit on yearly or total miles, the total price of the car and the balloon payment that will be due at the end of the lease. For individuals who regularly need a new car for work purposes, leasing is one way of ensuring that they will always have a new car at their disposal.