When it comes time to get a new vehicle, consumers are faced with a choice between buying or leasing a car.  They often pose the question as to whether it is better to buy or lease their new car.  The answer isn’t as simple as one might think and depends upon a variety of circumstances.

The first thing most people consider, when getting a new automobile, is cost.  The facts here depend upon the term, or length, of the lease.  The short-term monthly cost of leasing a car will always be around thirty to sixty percent less than the monthly cost of a loan payment.

When leasing a car on a medium term basis, the cost of leasing a car is about the same as buying a car, as long as the consumer sells or trades their car at the end of the loan and the lessee returns the vehicle.

The long-term cost of leasing a car is always higher than the cost of buying.  This is because most car owners will keep their vehicles long after the auto loan has been paid off.  This stretches the costs involved in buying a car out over a far longer period than the costs of leasing a car.

Deciding on whether you should be buying or leasing a car involves considerations other than cost.  Your lifestyle and your priorities speak strongly as to whether you may want to buy or lease a car.

If you enjoy having a brand new vehicle every two or three years, like driving a car that is always under warranty, and low monthly payments are important to you, you should probably consider leasing a car.

If you don’t mind a higher monthly payment, take pride in ownership of your vehicle, look forward to a time when you will have no monthly vehicle payments whatsoever, and don’t mind digging in your pocket for automobile repairs after warranties expire, you should probably consider buying a car rather than leasing a car.

If you have already decided that you will be leasing a car, there is a third option available to you that is unfamiliar to most consumers.  This option is less costly than the monthly payments for buying a car and less expensive than new payments for leasing a car.

The third option you have is to consider taking over someone else’s lease.  A little while back, there were some spectacular deals going on in the auto leasing industry.  Many people got monthly payment deals much lower than those available now.  Still, some of these people have suffered financial difficulty and find themselves struggling to meet the obligations of leasing a car.

These people need to get out of their car leasing agreements.  Fortunately, most companies allow the transfer of leases to another party.  All that is involved is paying a lease transfer fee.  Once the new lessee pays the fee, the car and the car leasing payments transfer to them.  The new lessee is getting a good deal, because they probably would have to pay a higher monthly payment now than the one the former owner took on when the deals were better.  Therefore, they are paying much less for leasing a car then they otherwise might have been.