Worth it to rate shop with this offer?

[Anonymous]

I believe I already know the answer to this, but wanted to get an idea if others may have similar experience and insight to possibly even lower rates.

So I have a loan @ 9.9% with CapOne and since my credit score has gone up significantly since that purchase I was instantly approved for 4.19% at my credit union AppleFCU. This is with a 713 score, and my CU will do rate reductions as score reaches higher tiers...but I believe it requires manual review and a hard pull to do so. The refinance would be for 58 months and save me over $100/mo on the current payment without increasing the length of the loan.

That being said, I am happy with the results, but I have access to another fantastic CU for auto loans, NIH CU. I didn't check with them first because Apple is my primary bank and I already had an app pulled for a CLI. But NIH lists some of the lowest rates around, and also offers deferred payments up to 90 days on all loans which is a nice little bonus. Just not sure if it's worth another HP (as I have a lot from a recent but very successful cc app spree).

Thoughts on all this?

[Anonymous]

It is my understanding that auto loan inquiries count as one HP if they hit within 14 days.  

[Anonymous]

Perhaps as far as score is concerned, but it still counts to your total number of inquiries. For example my concern is that when I'm shopping for a mortgage next year and they see 11 instead of say 9 inquiries, maybe that puts me into a new soft tier of "too many inquiries". I dunno, I wish this stuff was easier for people that just want to shop for the best deal.

[Anonymous]

You could try calling the bank and ask what rate your score might qualify for.  I also dont think applying for 1 to 2 places more would hurt your mortgage chances a year from now unless you have a large number of INQ's already.  Just be very targeted in who you apply to.

---

@Anonymous

---

[Method2Madness]

I had approx. six million inq's when I apped (and was subsequently approved) for a mortgage; It made absolutely NO difference whatsoever. They didn't even bring them up at any point during the process.

This isn't to say you should go out and rack up inq's; but a couple here and there shouldn't hurt.

In RE: to your original question, 4.whatever isn't a bad rate at all. You might be able to get it a bit lower with DCU, but I wouldn't go all crazy app'ing all around for a 1 (ish) point decrease.

[EW800]

I agree that DCU is good to checkout.  I believe they are currently 2.49% for new and used loans, and very easy to join.  Down side is that they do a HP to join and another for the auto loan.