Comparing offers, negotiating a good price or a few extras – these are the basics of buying a car. But if you overlook an important step, you’re wasting a lot of money.
Almost every second new car is financed by credit or leasing. This way is considered by many to be the cheapest. Nevertheless, the comparison is worthwhile. “Anyone who simply takes out the loan in the nearest bank branch almost always pays more interest than necessary,” says Verivox Managing Director Oliver Maier. The comparison portal shows how much money can be saved with cheap offers.
Credit comparison saves high interest costs
On a nationwide average, banks are currently charging 5.53 percent interest for an installment loan. Even with an interest rate of 2.39 percent* you save considerable interest costs over the term of the loan – and there are still significantly cheaper loans. If you want to buy a new small car like a VW Polo, for example, you can easily save eight percent of the loan in interest costs – just by choosing a cheaper loan.
*2.39 percent is the average interest rate for car loans on the comparison portal. This means that half of all customers who took out a car loan there in 2021 received this or even a lower interest rate.
An example: With an average loan (17,105 euros) with the more favorable conditions and a term of five years, there is a total saving of 1,400 euros in interest costs.
Car loans highest in Munich
And the higher the loan amount, the greater the savings. Especially if you want to finance a more expensive car with a loan, you should take the time to compare. According to the Verivox data, this primarily affects car buyers from Munich. The comparison portal knows that the loan amounts for buying a car are the highest there with an average of 20,326 euros. At the same time, the average income there, at 2,441 euros, is the highest in the survey.
They are followed by Karlsruhe (EUR 20,227), Freiburg (EUR 19,362) and Wiesbaden (EUR 19,119). The loan amounts are lowest in Lübeck (EUR 13,706) and Mönchengladbach (EUR 13,663). Anonymous loan requests from all German cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants were evaluated.
Financing from the car dealer often only seems cheap
Buyers should also carefully examine financing offers from the car dealership. It is true that low interest rates, sometimes even zero interest rates, sound tempting at first. However, this offer is often only a good one at first glance. Because: “The low interest rate is subsidized either by the manufacturer or by the dealer in order to boost sales. This reduces your scope for further price reductions,” says Oliver Maier. As a cash payer with a dealer-independent bank loan, on the other hand, you can negotiate significantly higher discounts – and this makes the purchase cheaper overall than with dealer financing.
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