Hire-purchase, leasing and conditional sale of tangible personal property

Mark Williams; Haitian Lu; Chin Aun Ong

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511776960.006

5 - Hire-purchase, leasing and conditional sale of tangible personal property

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011

Mark Williams ,

Haitian Lu and

Chin Aun Ong

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Mark Williams: Affiliation:
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Haitian Lu: Affiliation:
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Chin Aun Ong: Affiliation:
Hong Kong Polytechnic University

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Summary

Introduction

Previous chapters have explained how traditional security devices – such as legal mortgages strictu sensu, equitable mortgages, charges and pledges – are created, perfected and publicised, where relevant, over various types of tangible and intangible personal property. This chapter focuses on the quasi-security devices, namely the hire-purchase, lease and conditional sale agreements in Hong Kong and China.

The nature of a hire-purchase agreement is well settled. Chitty defines the hire-purchase agreement

as an agreement under which an owner lets chattels of any description out on hire and further agrees that the hirer may either return the goods and terminate the hiring or elect to purchase the goods when the payments for hire have reached a sum equal to the amount of the purchase price stated in the agreement or upon payment of a stated sum.

A less elaborate definition, but with the same meaning, is given by Goode: ‘[a] hire-purchase agreement as known to common law may be defined as a contract for the delivery of goods under which the hirer is granted an option to purchase the goods’. The Hong Kong Law Reform Commission's Report on Contracts for the Supply of Goods (2002) adopted a refined version of Goode's definition and gave a concise description of hire-purchase as follows: ‘a hire-purchase agreement is an agreement, or a combination of agreements, by which goods are supplied on hire and the hirer has the right but not the obligation to buy the goods’.

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Type: Chapter
Information: Secured Finance Law in China and Hong Kong , pp. 219 - 267

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511776960.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2010

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