The Drivelease Sale and Leaseback process sees you agree a realistic and current market value of your company car fleet with a new buyer – typically a leasing company or a funder. You then sell the vehicles to the new buyer who takes ownership and then leases the fleet back to you. This provides your company with an immediate cash injection and allows you to enjoy the benefits of a traditional contract hire deal. With sale and leaseback, further depreciation is no longer your company’s concern.

The first part of the process in setting up a Drivelease Sale and Leaseback agreement is to get together all of the essential information about your current company car fleet – such as mileage, registration dates, exact makes and models and full condition reports. You’ll also need to produce the vehicle’s service history and maintenance files. This is the most time-consuming part of the process but is absolutely vital.

From there, the leasing company or funder will offer a realistic market valuation of your fleet – usually based on industry guides such as CAP or Glass’s Guide. The new buyer will then make an offer for your fleet, and also offer you terms for a contract hire agreement based on mileage, duration of the term and the estimated future value of the vehicles. As with a traditional contract hire deal, you pay the difference between the current value and the future (residual) value in regular monthly payments for the agreed contract term.

Once an agreement is reached, the new buyer will arrange for funds to be transferred and take ownership of the V5s for all of the vehicles. You then start to make your monthly payments and your sale and leaseback deal is done.

There are many incentives that encourage companies to consider Drivelease Sale and Leaseback deals including:

Immediate cash injection: The sale of your company fleet allows you to put money into other areas of your business.

You remain in day-to-day control of your company fleet once sold.

Improvement of balance sheet through the sale of fixed assets.

Further depreciation and re-sale concerns are removed: You no longer have to worry about the future of your company fleet or its disposal.

Simpler budgeting: A contract hire agreement will allow you to deal with fixed monthly payments. You can also take out maintenance packages so your only concern is fuel and insurance for the fleet.

New for old: Through sale and leaseback you can establish a contract hire agreement which allows you to replace the vehicles with new vehicles at the end of the contract.

The downside to sale and leaseback is straightforward – you lose ownership of the vehicles. They are no longer your property and therefore the value of your assets is decreased.