How to buy a car for just one year?

April 25, 2023 11:09 PM

I don’t currently have or need a car. In June, I’m moving to a new city for 1 year, after which I move back home. It’s a town that you need a car in, though with the intensity of my job and a nonexistent commute, I’m probably only going to use said car 2-3x per week. What’s the smart move here? I’d be tempted to buy a crappy used car for the year but I won’t have the time or mental bandwidth to deal with car troubles. Buying something expensive, though, seems silly given how little I’m going to end up using it before reselling whatever I get. What do?
posted by sirion to Work & Money (14 answers total)

I've never done it because I come from "buy a new car and then keep it for decades" people, but this sounds exactly like what leasing a car would be good for?
posted by LadyOscar at 11:14 PM on April 25, 2023 [15 favorites]

Is Zipcar available there? Might not be reasonable since it's kinda rent by the hour, but I haven't used them in a few years and they may have deals for more longterm use. How much do you have to use the car if it's a "nonexistent commute?"
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:19 PM on April 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Seconding jenfullmoon, Zipcar is what the wife and I used when we lived in Chicago for a year and then we did the same in San Fransisco after we moved out west. We lived in the city, walked most places, but when we needed a car for a trip out of town or to do big shopping trips, we just grabbed the closest available zipcar near us. Worked great. We do the same thing now that we live in Sydney, but the service here is GoGet.

Even with weekend trips, it's way cheaper than owning a car or renting through a typical car service.
posted by qwip at 2:11 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

At that rate of usage, if you have access to Uber/Lyft, you might just want to do that. 2.5 round trips at $25 each for 52 weeks is $6,500. It's not cheap, but factoring in ownership, insurance, and gas.... it might be worth paying.
posted by scolbath at 4:33 AM on April 26, 2023 [7 favorites]

What might work is buying someone else's lease. Generally your full out some forms, they pay the transfer fee and you take over the payments. In some cases people are actually offering extra cash as an incentive. We had to sell a lease once and the process was simple.

Check out, for example, this car from lease trader. It has 24 months and plenty of moles left. It's 500 a month. But they're offering to pay you $2k to take it.... You drive it and then turn it in. It's a solid option if you can find something in price range and length you like.
posted by chasles at 5:30 AM on April 26, 2023 [8 favorites]

I should add this isn't a theory. I sold a lease when leaving a job in a foreign country sooner than I had originally planned and my found myself stuck with a nice lease that was 2 years too long. It was attractive enough that I didn't need to offer and incentive. The guy who bought it was exactly in your position. A one year max contract far from home.
posted by chasles at 5:44 AM on April 26, 2023

Zipcar sounds good, but based on my experience it cannot be relied on for mission-critical use.

Of the six times I used it, only once was the car available on-time and in driveable condition.

Once the car would not unlock and there were no other cars available in a reasonable range (yes, I had the required unlock card as well as the phone app).

Once I had to stop and get service done on the car to make it driveable.

Once they switched me to a different car, which was returned an hour late by the previous user. Zipcar support offered to extend my use by an hour, but they failed to enter it in the system so I got increasingly intense messages and was charged for the overage (which I clawed back after too much time on the phone).

The other times were "merely" the car being returned late by the previous user, returned with no fuel, fuel card not accepted at gas station, car having been smoked in by previous user....

Half were in Los Angeles, half in Boston.

I would strongly caution you against including Zipcar in your car strategy for the year. In my experience it is not safe to rely on Zipcar for applications where you need a car at specific times .
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 6:20 AM on April 26, 2023 [8 favorites]

Here is a link to a pretty comprehensive article about leasing.
posted by SageTrail at 7:02 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

If I were in your position and had the cash reserves to do so, I'd buy an ~8 year old Toyota or Honda sedan and sell it when you move back home. As long as they've had reasonable maintenance, they're still quite reliable at that point, and they hold their value well. At that phase in their life, mileage matters more than age, so given that you'll not be putting too many miles on it, depreciation should be pretty small.

Alternatively, if you're flush with cash, low mileage Subarus hold their value crazily well (I could sell my 5 year old Outback for almost as much as I bought it for new).

It's also valid to consider Lyft/Uber/Cabs if you don't want to deal with selling a car, but it can add up. Spitballing at $20 each way (which is on the low end) with tip and two trips per week, that's $4,160. My yearly operational costs are way under that, including deprecation. And I know that if I want to go somewhere, I can just walk outside and drive off rather than having to rely on a stranger to be available.
posted by Candleman at 7:31 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

I would say either buy a hyper-reliable cheap used Japanese car (Honda Civic? Toyota Corolla?) or just take Ubers lavishly.

Uber is probably cheaper- I did the math one year, and owning my car - which is a reliable and cheap little steed that I drive about 4 random times per week - costs me about $15 a day in insurance, parking, gas, tickets, and repairs, totalling around $450/month. I would rarely spend that much on Uber in a month.

I do love the convenience of being able to start my trips without ordering an Uber, but remember - that convenience evaporates on arrival when you have to find parking before you can actually reach your destination. Not having to park an Uber is usually much more convenient if you actually compare the durations of your trips (which I’ve done because I’m late a lot so I count every minute).
posted by nouvelle-personne at 7:40 AM on April 26, 2023

You could just buy something from Carmax, then sell it back to Carmax later. How much you lose on the sale depends on the used car market (in my case, I lost $0 except for fees, but that was a weird time)

But do the math (divide by 5) and compare to Lyft and Instacart.
posted by credulous at 8:24 AM on April 26, 2023

Seconding buying a car that's past the worst of its depreciation but still new enough to be reliable and selling it after a year. Remember you can get a loan for a used car, so you don't actually have to tie up ~$10k to do this - take out the loan and then pay it off with the proceeds from the sale.
posted by madcaptenor at 9:03 AM on April 26, 2023

I note that I did occasionally have the bad kinds of experiences that under-petticoat-rule had, but not that badly. That might vary based on location for all I know. I live in a small town and not Big City.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:22 AM on April 26, 2023

What if you had fewer wheels than 4?
E-bike or an electric motorcycle/scooter might to the trick, or full on motorcycle could make for a nice adventure year? You could always rent a car if you intermittently need something more.
posted by enfa at 4:42 PM on April 26, 2023