27th
Saw this coming…
Image via Wikipedia
On July 17th I did a post where I suspected that the next big announcement of losses from finance companies would be in car leases. Chrysler has just announced that Chrysler Financial will no longer be offering car leases as of August 1st. Additionally Ford announced this week that they had to take a write down of over $2 billion on leases. The New York Times did a great article on the whole issue today, click here to read it.(thanks for the tip on this article Jeff)
The entrepreneur in me says that there must an incredible opportunity in leasing used SUV’s right now. You can now buy 2-3 year old Range Rovers, Yukon’s, Escalade’s, etc. incredible cheap. The market to have these cars while reduced still exists and the prices that you could lease them for when buying them used might be attractive enough to entice people to keep a gas guzzler around. Also as in any bubble, things will change, gas prices will go down or stabilize and the American thirst for the big SUV will probably come back. Either way as the leasing company you are buying these vehicles at such low prices it almost does not matter.
So anyone looking for an idea to make money, feel free to take this one, I am a little too busy right now to get into the car leasing business.
