buckers

Hi

My family and are are moving over to the US in 3 and a bit weeks (very exicted!!!!) on a L1a visa with my hubby. We are moving to VA and will initially get a hire car but i want to reduce costs as much as possible with hire cars etc so my question is this:

Obviously to drive a car off the forecourt so to speak we need insurance - can we get insurance on a UK driving licence or will we need to get a US driving licence before we should even look at insurance/buying a car. (Unfortunately we could really do with 2 cars due to children/hubby's office location/my potential office location etc although also investigating car share with other work colleagues.

If anyone can help that would be great - dont want to raise our expectations of what we can/cant do with this too much.

Thanks to everyone in advance

Best regards

chrisfromusa

Well if you are moving here, I would recommend getting a VA driver's license, and buying a car here. Some insurance companies you can try are GEICO, Traveler's, Progressive, All State, and State Farm. In my experience Traveler's has quoted me the lowest rates of all of them. Are you buying a new car? There's plenty of dealers for that. Or if you're the market for a used one

www.cars.com
www.autotrader.com

they are the major used car sites in the U.S. Of course you can always check your local newspapers but these have photographs and stuff.

Forgot to mention, factor in the cost of health insurance, which will be high. We don't have a government program here like the NHS so you're on your own with that.

N1cky

Buying a car out here is a very long day, expect to be in the dealership for around 4 hours, even if buying cash.

Try your local Ford dealer, we managed to negotiate credit with them as they agreed to run the credit checks through Ford UK. Also VW have an international loan at around 4.9% which runs for the length of your visa. Get both your names put on the agreement if you manage to get credit as this will help build both your credit scores.

As far as insurance is concerned, you can get insurance with a UK license it is expensive, but even when you get your US driving license it doesn't bring the premiums down much. We are with AIG international, and pay around $230pm for 2 cars.

Bob

Go to the state dmv site, read up on it, as it all depends on the state, some will allow you to buy without a local license and insurance, some won't, some will be a problem getting insurance, some won't.

In my state it's no problem buying a car, you just can't register it till you've got insurance.

As for tips on buying a car and insurance, there's plenty of threads, one from a couple days ago well worth checking out.

gogzy

I moved to Texas in January this year, so the car-buying/insurance-procuring ordeal is still fairly clear in my head. Here are my tips:

Rental cars for when you first arrive
I use carhire3000.com, they're a UK based site (kind of like a rental-broker) and I have always found them to be much cheaper than dealing locally. The real beauty of using them is that all the insurance/CDW/SLI etc is included in the price you pay on the site. If you add those on at the counter here, it gets pricey quickly. I didn't know how long it would take to get my own car, so I think I booked rentals in 5 day increments and renewed as necessary.

License
Get it as quickly as possible. The test really isn't that difficult, and you don't have to book it weeks in advance like in the UK. I showed up at the DMV first thing in the morning, took my theory test straight away and then booked my practical test for the lunchtime. Bish bash bosh, I had a temporary license the same day, and you get your proper one in the mail a couple of weeks later.

Whilst your state may be fine with you driving on a UK license for a while, I've had plenty of experiences which led me to get my US license as quickly as I could. These range from car dealers being twitchy about test-drives to a traffic stop which turned into a wrongful arrest. Extreme example, but it happened to me. Bottom line is that life is easier when you get your license.

Car-buying
Shop around. Do your research. edmunds.com and autotrader.com were great resources for me. It's a pretty good time to be a buyer right now, so haggle as well. And don't forget that the tax/title etc does add a bit onto the price you see. I haggled hard and got my car for about $1500 less than what they were asking.

Insurance
It's expensive - that came as quite a shock to me. I'm paying $180/mo to insure my Rav4. I actually found that the big name insurers (Geico, Allstate, etc) were more expensive for me. I ended up finding the best deal through a small insurance brokers office near where I work. They did all the work to get the quotes and for me it worked out much easier and cheaper than doing it online. I gave them my details and a few of the cars I was interested in initially, so the day I found the right car I just called them up and they dealt with everything and faxed a cover-note to the dealership.

I remember how nerve-wracking it was before I moved not knowing how I was going to sort out transport. Hope this helps.