From lease car to own car
Posted on August 18, 2017 • 3 min read • 493 words
It is not easy when you have been driving lease cars for years and you suddenly have to buy your own car again. Well, the buying itself is relatively simple: You hand over money and you are the proud owner of your own car. Yet there is more to it than the financial transaction.
Quest
There are several places you can search.
- depends on how old or new you want the car
- use the websites of brand dealers
- leasing companies generally have relatively new cars that have run 160-180,000 km. Depending on the brand, it can be an interesting option.
In my case I opted for the website of the brand dealer. This made it easy to express my requirements on the website and then receive a list of cars, regardless of which dealer offered them. This makes searching easier. Moreover, you know what you get when you go to the brand dealer, you hope.
Bovag or not
It is wise to buy a car with a quality mark. Different brands have different names for this: Premium Selection, Leeuwenkeur, etc. At BMW, for example, Premium Selection means that a car is younger than xx years and has driven less than xx kilometers. You even get a two-year warranty when you purchase the car. This means that the risk of buying a pig in a poke is much smaller than when you buy a car from a private individual.
Especially if you don’t buy a new car, having some kind of warranty is mandatory in my opinion. If the selling party is not even willing to guarantee his car for that period, you can almost assume that he or she knows something that will cost you money. If a dealer does not want to issue a BOVAG or other warranty, I would let the car pass me by
Insurance
If you already have your own car, you have usually built up claim-free years. At least, if you haven’t done any damage, of course. This is useful when taking out new insurance. These claim-free years can give you a discount on your new insurance. You can prove this on the basis of your insurance papers. This information is also stored in a central system: Roy-data . Your old car insurer records your claim-free years here after you terminated your car insurance. Your new insurer uses this database to check whether the number of claim-free years specified is correct. Previously, you had to send a written statement from your old insurer to your new insurer. That is now no longer necessary.
Unfortunately, if you have driven a lease car, this is not so obvious. You have not had car insurance, so there is no registration in Roy data. In this case, you must ensure that you receive damage waivers from your previous leasing company(s). The insurer is free not to do anything with this, so don’t be surprised if it doesn’t yield anything.
