Auto-loan inquiries

[Anonymous]

So I have heard that if several auto-loan inquires were made in a short amount of time, they would be treated as one inquiry.

So I have 2 questions.

1. How long is that of a short timeframe? I made all the inquiries from 5/9 - 5/13. Will it be fine?

2. How to check if they coded the report correctly as Auto? I applied for auto-loan rate check with several credit unions, so I am worried that they will report as a credit application instead of auto-loan.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

So I have heard that if several auto-loan inquires were made in a short amount of time, they would be treated as one inquiry.

So I have 2 questions.

1. How long is that of a short timeframe? I made all the inquiries from 5/9 - 5/13. Will it be fine?

Different models have different windows,  The older models had more restrictive windows.  But even at their worst it was 14 days, so you are fine as far as the time period goes.

2. How to check if they coded the report correctly as Auto? I applied for auto-loan rate check with several credit unions, so I am worried that they will report as a credit application instead of auto-loan.

Some people have indeed reported cases were lot of their inquiries failed to be properly coded, resulting of course in a person getting hit not with 1 inquiry but 17 (say).  Maybe those are urban legends, I don't know,  But certainly if I were you I would pull my credit reports a month later and careful circle any that do not appear to be clealy coded as an AUTO loan.  There are lots of free tools that enable you to look at your reports,

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[Strogen]

When I went car shopping 2 years ago I ended up with like 10-15 more inquires out of the entire thing. They just recently dropped off. Problem is, the finance guy doesnt care about your credit and will shotgun you out to 5+ lenders. All the inquires that stuck for me were from small credit unions or other local banks. The dealership also managed to hit me twice....  

And god help you if you go to multiple dealerships and they all do the same thing.

In my opinion, you should get financing worked out before buying a car that way you dont get hit with a huge amount of inquires that will probably stick. 

[Anonymous]

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@Strogen wrote:
 

In my opinion, you should get financing worked out before buying a car that way you dont get hit with a huge amount of inquires that will probably stick. 

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I agree with Strogen 100% here.

There's another reason to have financing in place ahead of time.  That way, when you are at the various car dealerships, you'll be able to negotiate solely on the basis of lowering the price of the car, which virtually always makes the most financial sense.  Naive buyers otherwise get sucked into thinking that the dealership offering them a "low monthly payment" or "0% financing" is a great deal.  That's a bad way to think about it.  Better is to pay less for the total price.

And bear in mind, by having financing in place ahead of time, that doesn't preclude loan shopping later, after you settle on a dealership and make and model and final price..  It's analagous to being "pre-approved" prior to shopping for a home.  The lender who issues you the pre-approval or pre-qual letter for a house doesn't have to be the lender you finally settle on at closing.  It's just something to have in place to make the actual shopping piece easier.

[RobertEG]

Multiple inquries for auto, mortgage or student loans are all recorded by the CRAs and appear in your credit report the same as other inquiries.

Thus, when entered into your report, they are not treated as one inquiry.

The FICO algorithm treats multiple inquiries made within a sliding window as one inquiry for scoring purposes.  The difference will thus be seen in your score, not your credit report.

To actually get the additional inquires removed from credit reports viewed by others, you would need to get the inquiries recoded as soft.

[805orbust]

This is one I do NOT trust at all.  I will never let a dealer pull me ever again. Going in from now on with my own loan.