Breaking a car lease? Options?

andyward82

During these hard times I'm starting to consider breaking the lease on my car. What are my options on this? I don't have a lump sum of money to hand in but sooner or later I won't have the money to pay for this lease payments. If I just say "hey, I can't pay this any more, I'm redundant" what will happen?

liam8282

If you have the car lease insurance, you may be covered for redundancy, you should read your policy if you have one.

If not you will probably lose the car and possibly still have some sort of payment to make if the car doesn't cover what you owe them.

I am not certain about this though, again it would depend on your car lease agreement.

andyward82

Oh I'm happy to lose the car, in fact that's what I want to do. I'd like to just 'hand it back' but want to know the financial penalties that will be forced onto me.

I'm guessing this is what will happen...
I'll hand it back, they'll sell it at auction. They'll add up all the payments I've made and add that to the price. Then they'll subtract that price from the original book price of the car and I'll have to pay the remainder?

Help!!!

MMG

How many payments have you made on the car as yet, and how long is left on the contract?

standupguy

have a look at your agreement - your termination rights (if any) will be detailed.

One thing though - you need to be sure about the type of agreement as there are differences in options available.

You refer to a lease? - is it a genuine lease where you pay vat on the payments, or lease purchase which is different, or do you mean Hire purchase or PCP?

djwolf

Yeah I was going to say, is it a HP agreement and is it regulated? Generally you can hand the car back at the halfway stage and that's it but I'm not sure if they would charge you for doing this.