Whenever I speak with friends and family about vehicle leasing (after we’ve finished arguing about which film from The Lords of the Rings trilogy was best – the correct answer is all of them!), it is apparent that there are a few misconceptions. Primarily that there is only one, heavily-slandered, type of lease agreement. There’s actually a few and they vary considerably; some will match what you are after and some won’t be as suitable.
So, let’s look at the most popular form of vehicle lease agreement – Personal Contract Hire.
Personal Contract Hire, also referred to as Personal Leasing or abbreviated to simply ‘PCH’, is a form of leasing agreement designed for individual consumers. Contract Hire works like a long-term rental agreement. You simply rent a vehicle over a set number of years (measured in months – i.e. 18, 24, 36, 48 etc.) and then the vehicle is collected at the end, freeing you from having to sell the vehicle at a heavily reduced rate compared to what you spent on it brand new (depreciated value).
The concept is simple enough:
That is a great question and I’m so glad you’ve asked it. You will always have to consider if a financial product is a good match for your needs and circumstances.
Allow me to highlight some of the key benefits and features of a PCH:
Some of you curious cats will have been looking at that last point and thinking “what is a residual value” and you may have been feeling silly for not knowing. Well, worry no longer!
Residual value refers to how much an item is worth after a period of time has elapsed. Cars are well known for being depreciating assets – this means that their value will only decrease. This usually happens at what I can only describe as an inversely-exponential rate. Similar to going on a diet – you start off losing lots of weight very quickly, this rate of loss eventually slows down and you begin to plateau and only lose small amounts of weight.
Cars will lose a lot of their value very quickly. Some cars turn their noses up at fad diets and hold on to their value very well… particularly high-end limited edition vehicles – but all of the more mainstream vehicles will hit the salad bar and shed their value quickly.
With Contract Hire, the total cost of your monthly rentals is roughly calculated like this:
(Vehicle Purchase Price) – (Residual Value) = Total Rental Cost with the total rental cost being divided up by your chosen ‘payment profile’.
The "Cost of Lease" segment is then divided over how many payments you choose to make across the duration of the contract (e.g. 9+ 23 = 32 monthly payments over 24 months; with 9 of these monthly rentals being paid together as an initial payment, followed by 23 monthly payments).
As with all financial credit agreements, you will need to meet eligibility criteria and be subject to a credit check by the finance company. There’s a lot of credit scoring agencies out there, Experian and Equifax most notably, which will tell you your credit score free-of-charge for life; so it may be worth taking a little time to update yourself on your current credit rating.
Answer some of our questions and we can tell you if you are eligible for finance.
Generally, all of the finance companies will need at least the following criteria to be met:
If you have any doubt about the above, or how it might affect your application for finance, call our Sales Executives on 0330 221 0000 for further guidance.
What do I need to know about Personal Contract Hire?
Look at you with another great question! You are on a roll! A very mature and responsible question, you should always think about whether a financial product is right for you, by looking at its drawbacks.
With a Personal Contract Hire agreement, some points to consider would be:
We will contact you around 6 months before the end of your contract to discuss what you would like to do. You can then either choose to extend your current vehicle for a small amount of time (subject to eligibility and the Funder’s Terms & Conditions) or to look at your next brand new car.
Regardless, at the end of the contract, the car will be collected by a collection agency working on behalf of the Funder. The driver will analyse and record any damage to the vehicle, in line with the BVRLA’s Fair Wear & Tear Guidelines. Any damage that falls outside of these guidelines will be deemed chargeable to you.
The car will then be taken away and your contract will expire, releasing you to receive your next beautiful brand new vehicle.
If you require any further information about Personal Contract Hire, Business Contract Hire or would like to know about our current leasing special offers, please call us on 0330 221 0000 or email us at sales@carleasespecialoffers.co.uk.
Check out one of our helpful guides or our explaination of leasing to get all your questions answered.
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