the 1-pull in 30 days theory

Anonymous · ‎10-05-2011

i've been told you can apply for a car loan for 30 days at as many places as you want, and you only get 1 INQ. if that's true, penfed has an awesome deal for 1.99% for 48 months, but i'm pretty sure penfed also pulls an INQ just to sign up. if i apply to penfed to get a membership and then to get the auto loan, will that be 2 INQs or just 1 since i'm within 30 days? not sure how that works...might be best to get a reasonable rate with BofA first confirmed, then try penfed in case they pull 2 INQs. thoughts?

i pulled a 748 in august on EQ from this site. i have a little over 3 years of history and my last INQ was November 2010 on EQ, although Experian may show a corporate amex INQ in april of this year also. i had 1 auto loan from August 2010 until September 2011 and every payment was on time and obviously i even paid it off in september 2011. also as a hopeful bonus, i have 2 CC's and paid one to $0 and the other to <9% last month, and i will be applying for car loans before the next statements post. do you think penfed would accept me anyway? i know they are stringent...

MarineVietVet · ‎10-05-2011

@Anonymous wrote:
i've been told you can apply for a car loan for 30 days at as many places as you want, and you only get 1 INQ. is that true?

penfed has an awesome deal for 1.99 for 48 months, but i'm pretty sure penfed also pulls an INQ just to sign up. if i apply to penfed to get a membership and then to get the auto loan, will that be 2 INQs or just 1 since i'm within 30 days? not sure how that works...

might be best to get a reasonable rate with BofA first confirmed, then try penfed in case they pull 2 INQs. thoughts?

FICO scoring has a "de-duplication window" and it looks at your history for the last 12 months, and when it sees two or more hard inqs for the same type of mortgage or auto loan it will ignore all but one of them as far as scoring is concerned. If the lender is using an older FICO scoring model the window is 14 days, if they are using the newest model it can be up to 45 days. Also keep in mind that even though the multiple inqs count as one in FICO scoring, all of the inqs will continue to show on your reports (that is, reports pulled from sites other than myfico) for up to 2 years.

From a BK years ago to:
EX - 3/11 pulled by lender- 835, EQ - 2/11-816, TU - 2/11-782

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem".

Anonymous · ‎10-05-2011

thanks. i actually updated my post before you posted, i'm sorry. do you think with my current credit status it's even possible to be agreed to with penfed? i guess they would in fact have 2 INQs...one for signing up, and one for the auto loan, which can't be helpful.

also forgot to say i have a good income and have been at my current job for 1.5 years, since i know that impacts credit acceptance.

MarineVietVet · ‎10-05-2011

@Anonymous wrote:
thanks. i actually updated my post before you posted, i'm sorry. do you think with my current credit status it's even possible to be agreed to with penfed? i guess they would in fact have 2 INQs...one for signing up, and one for the auto loan, which can't be helpful.

also forgot to say i have a good income and have been at my current job for 1.5 years, since i know that impacts credit acceptance.

I'm not sure how PenFed would look at this. I would just call them and ask if an application for membership and credit would be considered one pull if done within 30 days.

From a BK years ago to:
EX - 3/11 pulled by lender- 835, EQ - 2/11-816, TU - 2/11-782

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem".

Anonymous · ‎10-25-2011

I recently joined Penfed. I had a similar question and contacted Penfed via email prior to applying for an auto loan.

This is the response I received:

"However, since we already pulled your credit 9 days ago, submitting an application will not generate another inquiry because we will just use the same credit report from when you opened your account. "

"PenFed would pull another inquiry any time after 60 days from the date your last application was submitted "