hard pulls from auto loan?

[Anonymous]

Is it normal to get a ton of hard pulls when shopping for auto loan? The dealership asked me to sign a form to apply for financing. I got 5 hard inquries (1 from dealership, 1 from auto vendor's financing company, 3 from other banks that I wasn't even explicitly informed). While they told me there would be only 1 hard inquiry.

[Anonymous]

Yes this is normal when dealerships are searching around for the best interest rate for you.  They are multiple HPs, but the good news is that they are only viewed and scored as 1 HP.  I believe there's a time frame for this.  I know a ton of HPs from a trip to a dealership are viewed as 1 HP on the same day, but I think this period of time could extend to a week or even 2 weeks.  Someone else can chime in on that.

[Anonymous]

It's a 14-day window for the older FICO models, and is a bit broader (30-day?) for the newer models.

Bear in mind that all of the inquiries in question will have to be coded correctly as auto-related in order for them not to be counted separately.  That will probably happen but doesn't always, so you may want to pull your reports a week later to confirm.

Some people (myself included) don't like using dealers for financing.  Instead we get our pre-approval for a loan set up through our credit union (say) before we start car shopping, which helps avoid the common salesman tactics of trying to sell me "low" or "zero" financing or "low monthly payments" etc.  Instead we can focus on the real deal, which is knocking down the price on the car. 

There's no reason you can't still loan shop when you finally pick the car and settle and the final price.

[Revelate]

45 days for FICO 8, and it's at least stated that for TU FICO 04 too; I had heard a while back that FICO 04 was 30 days but it's in the TU documentation as 45.

The mortgage pulls I got weren't all coded as such, but they all behaved as such; there's more to it than what we see as a consumer on our reports.  Ultimately it doesn't really matter, inquiries are so marginal anyway.

I do agree with arranging financing before, but I'll always let the dealer try to beat it.

[Anonymous]

Mine were all reported separately and a year and half later some of them still show!  Makes me angry.  Oh well, I guess in May they will all drop off thankfully.

[Anonymous]

They can all be reported and visible, but should only be viewed and scored as a single inquiry.