Do you Rent or Buy?

[MichaelJHunt]

Here’s a thread to discuss renting your car or buying it.

I bought my ZS TC LR.

I have driven 9,600 miles in it. Because I got it for a good price I would only lose £55 if I sold it to The Motorway. My dealer would give me back what I paid for it, and more if PX.

As such, it’s only cost me the electric I’ve put in up to now.

Trying to get the same sort of cost by renting would be quite difficult

 

[BugEyed]

Trying to get the same sort of cost by renting would be quite difficult

Yes and no. Trying to get out of leasing entirely can be hard, but in the lease world it's not unusual to be offered an upgrade at no extra cost if the current value of your current lease vehicle is greater than predicted. In that case the lease company books the profit on terminating the original lease and books another sale for the new lease - a win-win for them. Of course this is relatively unusual as, like your premise, it requires new cars not to devalue quickly, which is rare and only happened so generally in the market in the UK following WW2 and the "export to survive" policy.

 

[Gomev]

These days I'm a buyer as I tend to keep cars for longer now.

 

[Tweed98]

I have leased cars since 2007. My firm and several I have interviewed for insist that the terms of having a car allowance that the vehicle must be less than 5 years old.
I have always gone through the same agent but I always get competing prices to be sure I'm getting the best price.
For example I am currently paying £238 a month for a £27k Seat Leon over 4 years. I've paid about £12,500 for it including the advanced rental and they offered it to me to buy for £14500 which was the top end of the market according to Glasses. This means I'm about a grand better off than if I purchased it.
Also my experience of buying cars is the second they are in my ownership they do a clown car impression and fall apart. Even when I bout my 3 year old leased A3, only I had driven it and promptly the fly wheel fell apart then the turbo blew up. Then I had to replace the timing belt at 5 years.
I am now going for the very cheap option of an MG5 as a company vehicle, until the exchequor decides to put the BIK rates up!

 

[Nutnut]

I'm a buyer. When I looked at total cost over the duration I plan to keep the car (and owning it at the end of the period), leasing wasn't the cheapest option. If my car is well maintained and mechanically sound then I don't typically feel the need to change it for something new every few years, so that wasn't something I had to consider either.

I also don't buy phones on contract, so maybe I'm just old school in that I generally gravitate towards ownership anyway. Leasing also seems like a hamster wheel that people sometimes don't get off of, and I just don't want to continually be in a payment cycle if I can avoid it.