For most people, the car is no longer considered a luxury, but a necessity. Few families could drop the kids off at school, get to work, or even conduct the weekly shop without having a car to ferry everybody around in and collect the groceries. The car is even more important for those that travel with work, but owning and maintaining a car not only attracts ongoing costs but requires that you put a relatively large amount of capital into the purchase of the vehicle.
You could have thousands of pounds of capital tied up in your car and with seemingly no way of accessing it. One viable and beneficial alternative is to sell your car and utilise a personal contract hire agreement so that you can still have daily access to the car that you need.
There are a number of options when it comes to selling your car. Private sales do require advertising, some knowledge of cars, and potentially dealing with so-called tyre kickers, but this enables you to release close to the full value of the vehicle. Websites and services that offer to buy your car, like car auctions, will usually only pay a portion of the value of the car, but they do offer a quick sale and instant access to the cash. Some garages will buy cars outright without the need for part exchange.
Once you have sold your car, you will still need a vehicle to get around in. Personal lease agreements have become an increasingly popular option. While you never own the car that you are driving, you also don’t have to pay the initial capital but can still enjoy long-term use of a modern car. If you have a regular income but do not have a lot of capital that you can access, then you are likely to be able to enjoy access to a better quality and later model vehicle this way, too.
You do need to ensure that you can afford the monthly repayment and that you can afford to keep the car on the road. Decide whether you want the option to buy the car at the end of the contract, or if you will want to return it in order to get access to another new vehicle. Ensure that you know roughly how many miles you will cover over the period of the lease, too, and try to negotiate a deal if the mileage allowance on offer isn’t high enough. There is a wide selection of personal lease hire cars to choose from, even including prestige and luxury cars, as well as SUVs and sports cars.
