ADVICE: Purchase or lease: three advantages of financing

When purchasing a new vehicle, three options are offered to consumers. They can pay cash for their next vehicle, or decide to lease it. They can also finance the purchase if they wish. While the ultimate decision is often dictated by our budget, there are several considerations to keep in mind when deciding which option is best for us.

“Many consumers choose to lease because it is more affordable. It is true that the monthly payment will be lower in the vast majority of cases with a lease, but on the other hand it is always wise to look at all the variables and implications of each payment method in order to have a more global image of the various benefits, and then decision which option has the most advantageous for us, “says a sales advisor at Stadium Nissan. 

As the latter indicates, there are advantages and disadvantages with each option. Here are three benefits of financing.

No restriction on mileage

The biggest advantage of financing is that the vehicle we buy belongs to us. Thus, and unlike a lease, there is no restriction on the number of kilometers that we can travel annually.

In the case of a lease, we are usually limited to 24,000 kilometers per year (options do exist for 12,000, 16,000 and 20,000 kilometers annually). So if we travel a lot of kilometers per year, it will be more advantageous to opt for financing when buying our next vehicle.

More advantageous if we keep our vehicle longer

The majority of leases do not exceed 48 months, or four years. If we want to keep the vehicle longer, we must buy it at the end of our lease. Since it will sometimes be necessary to finance this purchase with the bank, our interest rate for the loan used to pay the residual value of the lease (the amount we have to pay to buy our vehicle) will be higher.

Conversely, when we buy a new vehicle, the interest rate is often lower for the duration of the loan. So if we compare the total amount paid for financing versus a lease with residual financing, it is usually much more advantageous to finance from the start.

Better return on investment

When you finance your vehicle, you pay for an asset that will belong to you one day. In the case of a lease, you pay for a vehicle that still belongs to the automaker. When you have completed the financing contract, you can resell the vehicle or keep it for a few more years without any payments. In both cases you can recover much of the difference between the amount you pay to finance and the amount you pay to lease with this scenario.