Car loan after BK

[rex444]

My wife and I were discharged in February and now need to replace our aging Volvo wagon.

My question, is it better to get financed at a dealer or at one of the many online places? We tried Capital One but were denied as I had accounts with them in the past and showed up late a few times, eventhough they were not parrt of our Ch7. I've been apporoved at a local big dealer but they don't have any vehicles we want. I don't want to keep shopping my bad credit around as it is humbling to say the least.

Thanks - mike

[rex444]

I was also approved through Roadloans but its only good at Carmax...who's cars I think are overpriced.

Does anyone have any recent experience with other lenders that might be worth a try?

[rex444]

Don't everyone reply at once

[lrprn]

Being discharged only three months, you are shopping for a car loan too soon to get any kind of reasonable rates at this point (if you can even get a conventional car loan in these tight financial times, as you have discovered).

Do you have a cash down payment? Are you trading in one of your older cars on the deal or are you trying to finance a new car 100%?

Have you tried the smaller, local used car lots? Those folks are really hurting in the current economy and may be more forgiving with their financing. Also, if you are willing to take a chance, as of today Chrysler dealers that were forcibly disconnected from GM as a part of their bankruptcy are now desperately trying to move the cars left on their lot without Chrysler financing. They may be able to make a local lending connection for you - no guarantees, of course.

Although this isn't what you want to hear, you just emerged from bankruptcy. The only reason you should be car shopping at this point is if the cars you have now cannot reasonably be repaired to get through another 6-9 months (is this the case in your situation?). I also hope you are shopping used rather than new - are you?

If there's no immediate real need for a new (to you) car, then it's best to spend the next 6-9 months building up your credit scores and save up a larger downpayment to overcome the bk stigma. You'll get much better rates at the year mark with a 10-20% downpayment than you can get right now.

[johnstep]

Approved for car loan and CC day after discharge

Congrats on your discharge!!!

Go to CapitalOne and apply for a car loan.

The day after my discharge (12/08) I applied with CapitalOne for a credit card and was approved. One week later I applied for a car loan with CapitalOne and received approval ($45k). Keep one thing in mind, you will HAVE TO document income with CapitalOne, so don't lie about income.

Give it a try (apply on-line)...

GOOD LUCK!

Cheers,John

[Rahaton]

Did you BK debt with them? We have a Cap one CC and car loan we might be letting go. I don't think they will be too keen on lending us more money ;-)

[rex444]

Thanks for the replies. I made a major forum mistake and did not give enough background information.

We are shopping used. Something that seats 7 as my wife has carpool duty coming up this fall and our current Volvo wagon with 120k miles on it is not big enough and needs some major repairs. In addition to the trade in (which we've been offered at least $2500 for) we have 2 to 3 grand more to put down. We are looking to buy something around $15k so that would put our down payment at around 30%. I've had the same steady job for over 11 years with completely verifiable income.

Cap One was part of our discharge :-( And I thought getting a used car loan of around $10k with a $250 to $300 monthly payment was a good way to start re-establishing credit.

[rex444]

I've been approved through one local but large dealership. It took a few days to get approved but finally with enough docs we did. But the suv we wanted sold before we got approved. I don't want to go through the process of trying to get approved at another place just for this to happen again. So I was hoping for a good suggestion of a place to try and get pre-approved by in order to take that to a dealer and negotiate just the price of the car and not worry so much about financing.