alt Hacker NewsEnglish is not my first language, sorry. If you have a device that you pay a monthly fee for, but you can't keep it at the end of the contract, where I am from we call that renting.
Leasing is a financial construction where you actually own the product / property, with the bank having the option to claim it if you fail to pay.
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Ah.
Renting is you pay $X a month and when the contact ends everyone walks away. You don’t get the thing back, the other party does.
Leasing is close but slightly different. You still pay $X, you still don’t own it and can walk away at the end.
But with a lease you are given a choice to buy the thing at a pre-arranged price when the lease is over. So when you sign the contract you know that at the end you can pay $700 and it’s yours. Or you can still walk away.
It’s far, far more common with cars. The dealership guesses how much the car will be worth and offers you at lease based on that. If the car is worth more at the end of the lease than your buyout price, you can buy the car cheaper then you could, on the open market. If it’s worth less, you can walk away. You didn’t lose as much as you would have if you had gotten a loan, and you could go buy the same car used if you wanted for less.
For something like a phone, I’m not sure it really matters that much. So I don’t know why they decided to do leases.
It’s a lease, not rent. I don’t know the exact numbers on this but you can pay “rent” for two years and then pay like $300 (I don’t know what the right number is here) at the end to own it outright at that point. So at the end of the day you pay like $200 more than someone that buys it outright from the get go.
This is not true, with leasing you don't own the product or property at all. Leasing is basically long-time rent. For example, when you lease a car, you don't own it - the leasing company does. In some cases, you can buy out the object at the end of the lease (like cars), in some cases you can't (like apartments).
> a financial construction where you actually own the product / property, with the bank having the option to claim it if you fail to pay.
This is called financing - basically, buying a thing with bank's money which they give you as a loan. For high-value purchases, there are often limitations on what you can do with the object, or requirements (like a requirement to have homeowner insurance for mortgages), but there are usually less restrictions compared to lease since you are the owner.