A lease contract, in general, gives the lessee the option to buy the leased property at a fair market value. Assets that are likely to have very high expected market values at expiration will tend to have lower costs of leasing.

If you lease a car for five years, your lease payments will end after five years; but, if you finance a car through an auto loan for five years, your loan payments will continue indefinitely.

A firm with leases instead of long$-$term loans is likely to appear stronger in a superficial credit analysis.

If the tax laws changed to allow companies to depreciate their equipment over a shorter period of time, the lessor would get larger tax credits and faster depreciation write$-$offs.