Have you noticed that many of the no money down advertisements for cars are no longer running. A few years ago it was almost like the car companies were giving away the cars for free with all the zero down, zero interests ads on TV. The fact is car credit has tightened up and it is very hard to get a loan unless you have a good credit rating. If your credit rating is subpar then there are a few things you can do to increase it and thus improve your financing chances.
The first thing to do is to get a free copy of your credit report and see if there are any problems showing up which aren’t yours. It is really not that uncommon that mistakes are made on a credit report and this can lock you out of getting the car financing you need. If there are discrepancies be sure to contact the company that reported the problem immediately so you can start to get it resolved. If you have a dispute with the company then you can add an explanation into your file telling your side of the story.
The next piece of business would be to get a handle on your debt payments. If you have credit card debt then work to decrease it dramatically. A high credit card balance is a red flag saying the consumer can not handle money. This looks like you would be a bad credit risk.
If you can’t pay off your cards at least work to decrease the balance of the ones that are close to being maxed out. The larger the ratio of available credit to actual credit you have the better a score you will get. If you are constantly running the maximum balance on the card this will lower your score.
The credit score is going to be between 300 and 800. The golden line is 620 which means this is generally seen as the cut-off between good credit and bad for a car loan. If you are below this threshold you will have problems and if your score is above you will be more likely to get a loan.
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