@Anonymous wrote:
To save time, I applied for an auto lease on a dealer's website. My credit isn't great, so I know this will be a chore. Soon after I submitted my application, they called me stating that they needed me to come on site for "an in person interview." This seems odd to me, since I've applied for loans before over the internet, or over the telephone and the only time anyone has wanted to see me was to sign the paperwork. My husband and I even got a car loan two years ago online before showing our faces to the dealership. Am I too suspicious or is this standard practice for some dealerships?
For folks with tougher credit this is pretty common. Leasing can be a bigger challange for those with lower scores and the costs can end up exceeding that of a purchase because leasing is really designed to work for those with low default risk. If you post some more details on your credit we might be able to offer some suggestions. For subprime and non-prime leases and loans the dealers will often have to structure the entire deal to run it by an actual human for approval where for folks with higher scores that process is pretty much automated and can be done fully online. My reccomendation is to always have a preapproval from a credit union in your pocket before you shop, for those with non-prime or sub-prime credit I suggest that you even do this for a lease, having that preapproval reduces your desperation to get a deal done and keeps the dealers honest. If you cannot get a preapproval from a credit union at least you know that going into the dealer so you can accept a less than great deal without worrying if you could get something better.
I would suggest posting some details including scores, debt to income, income and what car you want and we can probably provide some advice. If you don't already have your actual fico 8 auto scores I would suggest signing up here and getting them, knowing actual scores helps guide your strategy. Lastly if you are working on rebuilding your credit and thing you are going to improve it over the next 6-12 months buying tends to be the better way to go because you can refinance to a much better rate (my example is 12.57% to 4.29% in 7 months of rebuilding saving me about 8k in interest).
