Hey all,
I am looking to get my first car loan under my credit and am wondering how much not having a previous car loan on my credit will hurt my chances of getting the best possible rate. Credit scores are 780 across the board, no debt, six figure income, just only have credit cards and two paid off student loans for $17,000 total on my credit. I am looking at around $50,000 financed for the car loan. Can anyone shed light on whether I have a shot at getting the dealer-advertised best rate in my scenario?
Starting Scores (lender pull 3/27/10): 759 (EQ), 752 (TU), 749 (EX)
@tpatterson2k9 wrote:Hey all,
I am looking to get my first car loan under my credit and am wondering how much not having a previous car loan on my credit will hurt my chances of getting the best possible rate. Credit scores are 780 across the board, no debt, six figure income, just only have credit cards and two paid off student loans for $17,000 total on my credit. I am looking at around $50,000 financed for the car loan. Can anyone shed light on whether I have a shot at getting the dealer-advertised best rate in my scenario?
TBH, I had a high credit score and decent income when I purchased my first car and I had a relatively tough time without any prior car loan history (although, this was during the height of the great recession). I went to Lexus and tried to finance an IS250, which at the time was a $38k car. A down payment of around $5k helped the situation as Lexus financial only wanted to finance up to 80% of the car. Your chances of approval will be significantly higher with a down payment. If you are approved, you will definitely qualify for tier 0 regardless.
Thank you for your input Jeff and Nykos. The update is that I ended up getting approved for the car including full warranty and maintenance plan, $58,000 total at 0.9%. Surprsingly, I didn't run into any financing issues with the dealership even though I put $0 down on the car. The account has already shown up on my credit and I made my first payment this weekend.
Glad to finally have an installment loan on my credit so I don't have to worry about not having that comparable in the future! Thanks again guys!
Congrats! Enjoy the new ride
My credit union advertised rate was 1.59% at the time so the only place I applied was Lexus Financial Services and got the 0.9% rate. They ended up reporting to the credit under Toyotoa Motor Credit. The interesting part was that they reported it as a 73 month term instead of a 72 month. When talking to Toyota Motor Credit about that, the lady said they had to report it as 73 months because there was a 45 day grace period between buying the car and when my first payment started. Since that period was longer than a month, they added 1 month onto the term, a month that I didn't have to pay for.
@tpatterson2k9 wrote:My credit union advertised rate was 1.59% at the time so the only place I applied was Lexus Financial Services and got the 0.9% rate. They ended up reporting to the credit under Toyotoa Motor Credit. The interesting part was that they reported it as a 73 month term instead of a 72 month. When talking to Toyota Motor Credit about that, the lady said they had to report it as 73 months because there was a 45 day grace period between buying the car and when my first payment started. Since that period was longer than a month, they added 1 month onto the term, a month that I didn't have to pay for.
Lexus is running some pretty aggresive finance specials right now until their December to Remember event. 0.9% is great so congrats. BTW, I believe Lexus Financial always shows up as TMC...being that Lexus is Toyota 