Month: March 2009

Lease Gap Insurance Getting The Best Car Insurance

If you’ve recently bought a new car, you know about lease gap insurance. Also known as loan gap insurance, this coverage is for your new car. Generally, the holder of the loan on your car whether it is the dealership, the bank, or even your Uncle George will want you to have this coverage. But what is it for and why do you need to have it? Where can you get the best car insurance rate that includes lease gap insurance?


What It Is

Lease gap insurance or loan gap insurance is coverage to protect the holder of the loan. The best car insurance rate companies usually offer it. Let’s take a look at why you would need to have lease gap insurance.

Peter bought a new car. It was spectacular for him, anyway. Though it didn’t cost as much as the hot rod he wanted, it was perfectly acceptable for him to drive around in. He paid $5,000 out of his pocket hard earned cash and the bank gave him a loan for another $15,000. Yes, the car cost him $20,000. He loved his new car and got the best car insurance rate he could. It would cost him $300 a month to insure his new baby, but he knew it would be worth it. Peter drove around town fine, until one day, somebody cut him off in traffic and his new baby took the brunt of it. She was damaged.

His insurance decided after careful consideration that his baby was totaled. Because the car was totaled, the best rate the car insurance company could give him was the value of it totaled. But now, its value was only $10,000. Yep, it dropped in value significantly when he initially drove it off the lot. Now he owed more than it was worth to the car insurance company, anyhow. But now, Peter has the $10,000 check and no car to drive. He can write that money over to the bank, but will they be happy? Not quite. He still owes them $5,000. For a car he doesn’t have anymore, and can’t drive anymore. Peter isn’t happy. This could have turned out differently if Peter had lease gap coverage. The lease gap coverage would have paid that $5,000 that Peter still owed the bank and Peter would be finished with that car, forever.

Where To Get It?

Generally speaking, the dealership where you bought the car will offer you lease gap insurance. Of course, it will just be at an average car insurance rate or higher. They want to be sure they’ll get their money if anything happens to your car before you’ve paid it off in full. You can get your lease gap insurance there, or, for the best car insurance rate, check with other car insurance companies when you get the rest of your coverage. It will be a much better price than through the dealership.

Foreclosure Auction: Be Prepared Beforehand

One question that is sure to cross the minds of many prospective home buyers is what would be the benefit of buying a home or property that has been foreclosed. The good news is that there are a number of pluses to buying homes at foreclosure auctions as it offers you a chance to pick up foreclosed homes at a much lower than market rate. It could therefore prove to be a wise investment as it also means getting a readymade equity in the home as well.

Save Thousands Of Dollars

The fact of the matter is that foreclosure auctions allow people to save many thousands of dollars on homes that are sold at well below their market values. In fact, there are few if any better options in regard to finding an affordable home as compared with a foreclosure auction. The only thing you need to do is find out more about where a foreclosure auction is going to be held.

Your local newspaper will show you where foreclosure auctions are being held and the Internet too is another powerful resource where a lot of information on foreclosure auctions is made available. Another option is to try foreclosure listing services where you can get the entire lowdown on when as well as where a foreclosure auction is going to take place.

It is also possible to take advantage of free foreclosure auction listings, especially over the Internet though these listings might actually be useless and outdated because they are not always updated on a regular basis. It is therefore better to look for subscription listings which are almost always kept up-to-date and they can also send you email alerts whenever a new foreclosure auction is announced.

Of course, you must stay alert and be ready to act on short notice because things occur pretty fast at a foreclosure auction, and so being prepared beforehand is a necessity. You need to also expend effort in finding out about various foreclosure auctions well before these auctions are held so that you will be prepared to deal with every eventuality. Also, the location of the foreclosed property can have a bearing on the price that you will be paying for the property; so, find out more about the location of the property and know what the property prices are for a particular locality before making your bid.

Tax foreclosure auctions are another option in regard to buying property at more affordable prices and though this is a good idea you must know a bit more about such auctions to really profit from the low priced homes on offer. It is therefore a good idea to keep all your options open when you are in the market looking for a cheaper property.