Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions.
Key Principles
We value your trust. Our mission is to provide readers with accurate and unbiased information, and we have editorial standards in place to ensure that happens. Our editors and reporters thoroughly fact-check editorial content to ensure the information you’re reading is accurate. We maintain a firewall between our advertisers and our editorial team. Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from our advertisers.
Editorial Independence
Bankrate’s editorial team writes on behalf of YOU – the reader. Our goal is to give you the best advice to help you make smart personal finance decisions. We follow strict guidelines to ensure that our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers. Our editorial team receives no direct compensation from advertisers, and our content is thoroughly fact-checked to ensure accuracy. So, whether you’re reading an article or a review, you can trust that you’re getting credible and dependable information.
You have money questions. Bankrate has answers. Our experts have been helping you master your money for over four decades. We continually strive to provide consumers with the expert advice and tools needed to succeed throughout life’s financial journey.
Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that our content is honest and accurate. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. The content created by our editorial staff is objective, factual, and not influenced by our advertisers.
We’re transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money.
Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and, services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service.
My leased car was repossessed and then sold at auction for $6,500. I was never notified of when or where the auction was to take place. My remaining balance on the lease was $9,035.82 including all fees. Shouldn’t the net proceeds from the auction — $6,500 — get subtracted from my remaining balance, leaving me responsible for $2,535.82? The leasing company says I am responsible for the whole $9,035 because I did not own the car, and that it was a lease, instead of a loan. Is this true?
Leasing and financing are different beasts. Both provide a means for driving a vehicle that you couldn’t afford to pay cash for up front. Financing is buying the vehicle on time with the borrower eventually receiving title to the vehicle.
Leasing, on the other hand, is renting or paying for the use of the vehicle over the length of the contract. The monthly payments are computed by subtracting from the sale price the “residual value” of the car — the value that it is expected to be worth when the lease is over — divided by the number of payments. It’s like renting an apartment — just because you pay rent doesn’t mean you own any portion or share of the apartment. So, you had no equity in that vehicle and consequently no claim on the auction proceeds.
The $9,035 is most likely the total of all the payments on the lease you still owed, together with fees and penalties. Unfortunately if the leasing company wants to play hard ball, it has a right to still actively collect the balance left on your contract. One possible solution is to offer a settlement.
Here are this week’s reader questions:
Share