Short Term Lease - Short Term Car Leasing

3 month lease - 6 month lease - 12 month lease - 1 year lease

Car dealers and leasing companies don't offer short term leases on new cars. That is, they only offer leases that start at 24 months. If a shorter term is required, one must look elsewhere. We'll tell you how and where.

Why a Short Term Lease?

There are many reasons someone might want a vehicle for a relatively short period of time. A temporary job assignment. School. Temporary financial situation. Special family needs. Military deployment. Want to "test drive" a particular make/model for a while. Don't have funds for down payment and dealer fees.

In many cases a long-term rental from a car rental company may be the answer. Rent terms can range from one day to several months, although long rentals can be very expensive.

As a rule of thumb, if your needs are for less than six months, renting may be better. However, for six months to 24 months, or more, you may be better to consider a short-term lease. It's important to understand that renting is not leasing, and leasing is not renting.

Many short term car leases are being offered at bargain prices, if you know where to look.

How Does it Work?

All short term leases are lease "assumptions." That is, one party arranges to take over a lease from another party who wants out of their existing lease. The new lessee assumes the monthly payments and other responsibilities for the remaining months of the original lease. In some cases the remaining time on the lease can be just a few months. In other cases, there can be two or three years remaining. The process of lease assumption is one that involves the "seller's" lease company making the necessary paperwork and contract changes to switch the lease over.

At the end of a short term lease, the new "buyer" is responsible for returning the vehicle to the lease company, or optionally purchasing the vehicle. If the vehicle is returned, the new lessee can be charged for excessive damages or mileage just as the original lessee would have if they had kept their vehicle. In some cases, the lease company will keep the original lessee responsible if the new lessee defaults on the lease.

How to Find Short Term Leases

Although you can sometimes find lease "sellers" in newspaper classifieds or "auto trader" magazines, this is not the best way. If you happen to find a lease in this way, remember it's not legal and proper until the selling party's lease company approves and changes the contract. You can't simply take over payments.

The better way is to visit the web site of one of a handful of companies on the Internet who specialize in matching up lease sellers with willing buyers. For a fee, they list and display vehicles for which lease transfers are being offered. In many cases these can be very good deals, especially when the original lease deal was good to begin with. Sellers frequently offer cash incentives to interested buyers.

If you decide to take over one of the leases you find on such a web site, the company will help arrange and complete the deal, for a small fee of course.

Although there are a number of companies who offer this service on the Internet, Swapalease is the original and has assisted in thousands of short term lease transfers. The company is well respected and has a huge inventory of assumable leases, many of which are outstanding deals.

Also read our article, Terminate a Lease, to get the "seller" viewpoint on this topic.

For more, see LeaseGuide.com