Talk:Hire purchase

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Hire purchase is used in Auustralia, however Lease Options are used in Real Estate transactions in Australia and hence I believe they should NOT be merged (Hire Purcahse is seen as more "retail" where as Lease Option is seen more in a commercial/finance way).

Forgive my lack of international experience but would I not be right in saying that "installment plan" is an American scheme whereas "Hire Purchase" is other places like UK, Australia, etc? If so, merging the pages would seem inappropriate because it would mean conflating different sets of laws and jargon, or creating separate headings in the page (just like keeping them as separate pages). -David91 17:14, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I think that is right, and I see your point, but since they are so related, I think there has got to be a better way to have the material organized than it is now. It is clear the articles were not even aware the others existed before recent attempts to try to link them. - Taxman Talk 17:52, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Well, these are parallel systems rather than related systems. HP defers the transfer of title until all the hire payments have been made in full. Only then can the hirer buy at a predetermined (albeit usually a nominal) price. In the installment plan, title passes immediately upon contract with payments being spread over a period of time. So, this is a credit sale system creating debtors and creditors, with local versions of nonpossessory "pledge" and "lien" to protect the creditor with completely different applications to those in the UK. This distinction is of major significance. If the hirer defaults in the UK, the finance company as owner can repossess their goods (subject to statutory exceptions). If the hirer parts with possession to a third party, this is theft of the goods from the finance company which can recover their goods from the third parties. The reason why the two articles do not acknowledge the other's existence is that the laws are more than slightly different. A similarity of effect is only detectable in instalment land transactions where the transfer of title is deferred until all payments have been made. But, in the UK, the mortgage purchase system for land is conceptually different.

Now, I did not write the HP page and, if truth be told, I do not think it is very good but, at a superficial level. it is not uninformative. I am all in favour of both articles being brought up to a proper level. If no-one with current knowledge turns up to "do" HP, I will volunteer but, since I am house-bound with no current reference books, I cannot guarantee that what I remember from twenty five or so years ago will be sufficient even with on-line search, e.g. I see the Sale and Supply of Goods Act 1994 and Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 which are unknown quantities to me at present. So I wait for others to step into the breach. -David91 19:16, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] First draft

As indicated above, I have no access to current laws. I have therefore limited this draft to general principles common to all the jurisdictions. Hopefully, there are no major errors. But, I sincerely hope that up-to-date practitioners from the Commonwealth will take the time to review this material and modify as necessary. David91 21:04, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal March 2006

I'm (re-)proposing the merger of articles: Rent to own, Lease purchase contract, Closed-end leasing. The concept is universal, and I don't see any reason why the pages can't be made universal. (Anyone looking for specific legal advice can do much better than Wikipedia.) I'm less enthusiastic about Installment plan (which should also cover "layaway" with the difference being that the shop retains the goods until the payments are complete) but most of the information currently on that page describes "hire purchase". I've also made some redirects e.g. Rental purchase which is, again, the same concept with different terminology[http:// www.rtoonline.com/Law/allAds.asp]. Ewlyahoocom 19:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, we have been here before since I separated out closed-end leasing to its own page. It is not so much whether the concepts are or are not universal. The devil lies in the detail. Rent to own is a stub and appears to be U.S. based. I accept that could be merged into either closed end leasing or hire purchase. Lease purchase appears to include real property while hire purchase is exclusively personal property. I assume that this is also U.S. based and, if so, it could be included with closed end leasing to form a U.S.-centric page including the three U.S. pages. If your proposal is to put all four on the same page, the only way to preserve coherence in each law between the different jurisdictions, is to lump all the explanations of the laws together on one page, but as completely separate chunks so that internal coherence is maintained. I am against long pages in principle. For example, I think the murder page is a mess. No-one could or should be relying on Wiki pages for advice. To that extent we agree. But the level of detail provided on the law pages in Wiki is completely inadequate for that purpose. A standard law textbook on commercial law would run to as many as a hundred pages on hire purchase and practitioner manuals with precedents as to the different forms of agreement would be hundreds of pages. Such detail would be required for the purposes of extracting useful material upon which advice could be based. The standard university level module on hire purchase would last about six weeks (a one year course covers Sale of Goods, Agency and Hire Purchase). These pages are the barest minimums consistent with accuracy. Thus, I approve the idea of the merger of the U.S.-based material to a single page if those who specialise in U.S. law see no conceptual problems. But I oppose the reintegration of closed end leasing into hire purchase because all that does is to make the page longer and full of warnings not to confuse the two chunks. David91 02:20, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Why not just leave them seperate pages and have links to each other; why is this such a big deal? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.181.209.186 (talk • contribs)
OK, since I guess we're agreed that its the same concept, maybe you can just explain to me why Wikipedia should be some kind of law dictionary? I mean, in some places there's laws for just about everything one might want to do from walking their dog to opening their mail to using the loo. Must we break out every human action potentially covered by some law into its own page for each jurisdiction? (I think this is state law in the U.S. so that's at least 43 44 new pages according to http://www.rtoonline.com/Law/allAds.asp) Ewlyahoocom 19:17, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I carefully qualified my agreement as to whether these are or are not the same concepts. I am not familiar with U.S. laws and therefore cannot say whether the U.S. pages are sufficiently similar to justify merging. I find your question on the inclusion of legal material difficult to understand. I find the idea of a "serious" encyclopaedia with hundreds of pages on computer games and comics somewhat extraordinary, but I accept that it may be the function of an on-line source to deal with trivia. Why are you are hostile to the inclusion of more academic material? As to the reason for addressing laws separately by jurisdiction: laws are different in different places and it can be very confusing to a lay reader if you mix different laws and their explanations together (just as, I assume, it might be confusing, if not annoying to readers, if editors mixed Star Wars and Star Trek together as being the same science fiction concepts). David91 02:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I'll ask you as simply as I can: should this be an article about the concept? or a set of articles about the laws that cover the concept? Ewlyahoocom 06:02, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Your question cannot be answered. Some of the systems "sell" goods whether immediately or on a deferred basis, others allow the "possession" and "use" of goods with an option to purchase at a fixed or determinable period of time, others involve immovable property or intangible property. Unless you explain the systems, i.e. what is a "sale", etc. and the nature of the different forms of property, you cannot know what the concepts are and how they relate. Thus, laws are no more than the operationalisation of concepts and it is impossible to separate one from the other. And this, of course, is true of almost all topics which have a theory underpinning practice. So what is your point? David91 06:25, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
The merge sounds good, they are such similer topics. Why not just stick them all together, make serching for info that much easier.
 --  Teh Teck Geek 13:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
The term "Hire Purchase" has zero search relevancy for North Americans as it relates to "lease purchase," "lease option" or "rent to own." Most North Americans haven't even heard of this term and indeed, the term doesn't make much sense, especially as it relates to leasing with an option to purchase. They should most definitely not be merged. jeffb0 08:55, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
The term "Lift" has zero search relevancy for North Americans as it relates to "elevators." Most North Americans haven't even heard of this term and indeed, the term doesn't make much sense, especially as it relates to elevating things. They should most definitely not be merged. Ewlyahoocom 15:53, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Redirected pages still appear in the search results. An American searchinf for Lease purchase will still find that result first, but post-merge it would redirect them to Hire purchase. --81.168.72.184 13:22, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hire purchase refers to the English origins of the transaction

While hire purchase is the legal origin of the rent-to-own transaction, the two should not be merged as rent-to-own has become its own market and legal definition in the economy today. Most notably, in the United States the rent-to-own transaction is legally defined in 47 states and represents a $6.6 billion dollar industry serving 3 million customers annually. There are more than 8000 stores throughout North America and beyond that rent-to-own furniture, electronics, appliances, computers, wheels and tires, and other consumer products. The fact that the customer is never obligated to make the next payment is what distinquishes the rent-to-own transaction in the marketplace. If the customer chooses to make every rental payment or choose an early purchase option gives the rent-to-own transaction its ownership aspect but the no-obligation aspect of the transaction is its appeal to those who either cannot or choose not to be obligated by a traditional lease.

[edit] Lease-Options

As an author and practitioner of lease-options with a respectable portfolio in the Southeast U.S., I can clearly state that there is definitely a difference between lease purchase and lease-options. Additionally, hire purchase is largely an unknown term within U.S. circles. That probably needs to stand on its own.

I would be happy to contribute to the lease-options article. However, it is important to note that even with the lease-options circles, the actual implementation can be vastly different.

The lease-options article absolutely must stand on its own.

[edit] Please don't merge

I'm pleased that you're a law professor Chris, but the problem with Rent To Own and Hire Purchase is that neither article has any cited sources. It seems that a lot of discussion is going into this topic, but until someone takes the time to start citing some facts I don't think we have an article that will survive the test of time in either case. If we lack one well cited article of the two, I don't see the harm in merging them as technically they both could be flagged for deletion. Alan.ca 02:31, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm a UK law professor, and this is an area of law I taught for some years. The only page which might be merged with Hire Purchase is Closed-end Leasing, as these are indeed identical conceptually. The other three are not sufficiently closely related to be merged.

However, I'd plead that hire purchase is conceptually important historically. The article contains a major conceptual error in the first line where it says that hire purchase is a type of conditional sale. That is precisely what it is *not*. It was invented in the 1880s (where the subject matter was traditionally pianos, unexpectedly) after a legal decision which meant that a conditional sale was ineffective to maintain the lender's security against the piano if the buyer sold it to a third party. Some clever person invented the concept of hiring the piano to the user, but *not* selling it until the very end of the arrangement - the concept is explained correctly under Closed-end leasing.

Although Closed-end leasing and Hire purchase are the same legal structure under different names, the history is so different that I think Hire Purchase deserves its own entry as the historical begetter of the concept. I hope to find time to edit the entry over the next few weeks (getting a book out at the moment).

Prof. Chris Reed, Queen Mary University of London (www.qmul.ac.uk), 27 October 2006

[edit] No merge consensus

Looking over this discussion it seems like the consensus is not to merge closed-end leasing here so I'm removing the merge tags. If you disagree you can add them back. Tocharianne 17:44, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] First ever hire purchase scheme?

According to http://www.gizmohighway.com/history/sewing_machine.htm it was Isaac Merrit Singer originator of the Singer sewing machine "Singer was Brilliant at selling his machines and with a lawyer named Clark he set up the first ever hire purchase scheme." Ewlyahoocom 16:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lease purchase should go to disambig

Lease purchase redirects here. Lease option still exists and refers to lease purchase. I see there has been a discussion about merging. I want to introduce yet another wrinkle -- lease purchase by governments particularly in the United States where projects are built without a bond issue but rather via a "lease" with a an agency. This is used to build many of the modern prisons in the U.S. as financing a new prison normally would be opposed by the populace via conventional bond methods. Americasroof 05:37, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Economics

I think this article doesn't touch enough on the economic aspect of the arrangement (no math =(). I was informed that the way the interest is calculated on HP basis is different from typical calculation. __earth (Talk) 01:59, 11 October 2007 (UTC)