When one point matters...

[masscredit]

I'm helping a friend buy a new car. Was researching rates and found she is one point away from their best rate (4.99 vs 3.99). The loan is going to be stretched out then paid down early. If she does follows the payment schedule, that point will cost her $1152. ($16 per month). It also shows that having a number of cards to help pad utilization can be helpful. She just has two, one is paid off and the other is at 45%. Total utilization is at 30%. 

[Thomas_Thumb]

That's unfortunate. All your friend needs to do is have 1 of 2 cards report a balance at a reduced utilization level of under 29% to pick-up a few points.

Fico version being pulled was not specified but multiple related inquiries for loans are Deduped to count as 1 for 45 days on Fico 8/9 and 15 days on older Fico models. Also, there is a 30 day buffer before the inquiries impact score.

Can your friend can hold off a month and implement AZE1 with reported balance low enough to reduce AG UT to below 9%? If yes, it might be worth repulling score before finalizing a loan.

Also, the version of Fico used varies depending on the loan company. Does your friend know all their Fico scores? I believe there are some threads listing Fico score used by loan company. Geography may be a factor as well.

[masscredit]

@Thomas_Thumb  She would have had to pay around $2K to get it down to 28%. Closing date isn't for a few weeks.  We both thought it would be a good idea to make the purchase now because of the tarriffs. The prices would go up by thousands so we went for it. I don't know which version they pulled but she qualified for 3.49%.  Best rates that I found at various banks/CUs were around 6% so it was a good deal through the dealer and they didn't get her for any extras.

[Kforce]

Excellent rate.