My wife, daughter and I will be moving to work outside of Bern in July. We want to have a car for the freedom and ease. I have discovered that it would be very hard to bring my old, paid off honda since it's old and would probably need a lot of work to be Swiss road ready. What kind of monthly cost am I looking at to lease or buy? DO I have the option to buy being new to Switzerland? Any suggestions would be great.

There are plenty of cars for leasing and buying and they can be be found online here: www.autoscout24.ch

First you must decide what you would like to get and how long you will be staying here. Then budget, budget and budget. It will determine what is more economical: buying vs leasing.

If you just want to get any car that will take you from point A to B, you might just opt for something with the lowest interest rate. Recently, I got some leaflets from Opel in my mail box and their spring offer looked pretty good.

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The Swiss are quite happy about you spending money, it's not some third world Eastern European country back in the 50's complete with dictator here.

Have a look here, plenty of people selling cars on EF, Dodgyken will see you alright about price

Thanks for the reply. We plan on living for the foreseeable future as our jobs we under renewing contracts every 2 years. We are just looking for a basic, reliable car. I have no idea what monthly rates are compared o the US. I also could use some advice on financing because we don't want to drop a huge chunk of our savings on a car.

Rough costs, 10-20% deposit, 5.9% interest.

24-60mth leases available.

Different residuals depending on what you are leasing and with whom.

40-50k car - over 3 years - with 10% is around 750-850chf per month

I know people will sell me a car, I just wanted to know how financing one goes. I should have said leasing/financing

And you think 3 threads - is the way about getting help???

You have been given the information - now do your own research - we are not wet nurses

Credit from Migros bank online http://www.migrosbank.ch/de/Private/...it/default.htm

I think it's going to be rather tough to get a car financed here if you only just moved to Switzerland. Leasing rates are about the same as in the US - but again, leasing is also a kind of financing and also requires a credit history in Switzerland.

If I were you, I'd just buy a used car - autoscout24.ch will tell you how to find them.

Peter

An option is Mobility http://mobility.ch/en/pub/index.cfm

very useful for short trips.

The public transport is extremely good so from cities to cities it's much better than a car and even for mountains or so you can basically reach any -- i say any -- villages with trains and busses, even with a baby pushchair or suitcases etc.

Cash works for me.

You can pick up a good used car, freshly inspected, for a few 1000.

Tom

True, public transport is excellent - but it's also insanely expensive, especially for city to city transfers. Mobility is a good choice if you can live without a car (which we couldn't - the nearest railway station is 2km away from our house) and if you don't need the car for longer distances, as the per-km rates for Mobility are steep as well.

I would at least be here for 3 months before you buy/lease a car. Companies normally have a probation period of 3 months.

Do you have about 12K CHF to buy a used car? That is your best
bet. If you do not, I would lease. The leasing rates that I got
were 3.9% from Ford.

Secondly, do you REALLY need a car? The public transport here
is excellent.

There is a service here called Mobility where you can rent a car
very inexpensively every now and then! www.mobility.ch

In my experience - something good with fresk MFK and service starts at 3000chf - at the end of 2 years it will be worth 1000-2000chf.

I leased my car from BMW, 2.9% and saved 22,000 SF on price

Thanks for all the suggestions. I just love to have freedom of a car. I have a pretty good handle on prices now, I just want to make sure that I will be able to qualify. My wife and I will make plenty of money, so it's just a matter of being new to the country.

You tell 'em!

Pretty good return on your money, no?

Buy a new car, and lose 10-20k in 2 years (or more).

The car my girlfiend just bought was 3300 with fresh collauda (official inspection), with only 90k km.

Tom

You find a car (Estate or SUV) with towbar AND MFK for under 3k??

Quite challenging I tell you

Very True