Can young-drivers lease a car? This is a difficult question as there are number of factors which a young-driver must consider when undertaking a leasing arrangement.
As car leasing is a credit agreement, you must be aged 18 or older. Additionally, as a young person, you need to consider your credit position and status before selecting your vehicle. Perhaps consider getting an online credit report initially to ensure some of your basic details are correctly noted – are you on the electoral register for your home address? Have any existing credit arrangements been noted on your file?
In some circumstances, our selected finance companies will consider a joint application with a parent to help support the application.
In addition to credit, you also have to take into account income/expenditure. As part of treating customers fairly, we would not process an application unless we were sure that this presented an affordable position to the customer. You will be asked to provide a full detail of your income and any material expenditure, as the finance company needs to have comfort that the proposed rental payments meet your financial circumstances.
If your rental payments exceed your income, this is not something which we could support unfortunately.
The final point to note is car insurance. Understandably, young drivers are now looking for car purchase or leasing solutions which include the cost of insurance. The reason for this is that many drivers under 25 years old cannot afford to insure their vehicle.
In many cases, the monthly insurance premium is bigger than the monthly rental!
While there are some dealer-specific car insurance schemes, there is very little in the contract hire and leasing industry which we can offer to meet the insurance requirements. While we can offer a funder-maintained arrangement (to cover the cost of all servicing, maintenance, consumable and tyres) we cannot offer insurance.
Therefore, young drivers need to conduct due diligence into insurance costs BEFORE committing to a new car.
Search for your next lease car deal HERE on CarLease UK.