Thought Id share a recent experience with getting finance for a car that might be of benefit to others.
Was looking for 15k over 3 years. Firstly I went online to all the banks to see what they could do for me. Ulster at 6.8, BOS at 7.2 rest were upwards of that. But thats not the point, there'll always be someone .1% cheaper then the other guy. Heres the way to do it, get your lowest rate and then get your repayments on that. I went with NIB in the end as I have my mortage with them and they sorted the loan in a day for me. Worked out at 462e per month which was about 6.9%.
I then started looking at cars, I went to 3 dealerships Mazda, Renault and BMW. Of course they all tried to sell me finance as well as the car. Renault wouldnt come below 8.5% which was bad even after I told them what I was getting from my bank. However, both Mazda and BMW came down from initial high rates of around 8% and matched my bank. I had the money at that stage but didnt tell the dealers that as I was interested in what they had to offer. I settled on a SH BMW and proceeded to haggle on the price of the car. I had 3k to put on top of the 15k loan so I wouldnt go above 18k, he wouldnt go below 18,500. So the salesman got their finance to build the extra 500 into the loan so repayments and term would be the same, in effect taking their interest rate lower then the bank. I checked the over all rate with Karls calc and it shows the APR rate is down to below 5.5%. Just goes to show what they have to play with and they can do it if they want.
Important to have that repayment figure (in my case 462e) when you sit down with the dealers finance person as they will ask you what rate you got elsewhere so theyll know what they have to play with and theres no point them quoting you something higher then what you got from the bank.
Contrast this with me ringing my local BOI branch, car loan rate at 8.9% (although this was variable and would come down if fixed), quite high I said and while Id like to do business with you as I bank with you I can get 6.8% var. off UB online which you can check for yourself. He actually said well youd be better off doing that then!
Ive put this in car related issues but if someone thinks it might be better in one of the financial forums then please move.
Was looking for 15k over 3 years. Firstly I went online to all the banks to see what they could do for me. Ulster at 6.8, BOS at 7.2 rest were upwards of that. But thats not the point, there'll always be someone .1% cheaper then the other guy. Heres the way to do it, get your lowest rate and then get your repayments on that. I went with NIB in the end as I have my mortage with them and they sorted the loan in a day for me. Worked out at 462e per month which was about 6.9%.
I then started looking at cars, I went to 3 dealerships Mazda, Renault and BMW. Of course they all tried to sell me finance as well as the car. Renault wouldnt come below 8.5% which was bad even after I told them what I was getting from my bank. However, both Mazda and BMW came down from initial high rates of around 8% and matched my bank. I had the money at that stage but didnt tell the dealers that as I was interested in what they had to offer. I settled on a SH BMW and proceeded to haggle on the price of the car. I had 3k to put on top of the 15k loan so I wouldnt go above 18k, he wouldnt go below 18,500. So the salesman got their finance to build the extra 500 into the loan so repayments and term would be the same, in effect taking their interest rate lower then the bank. I checked the over all rate with Karls calc and it shows the APR rate is down to below 5.5%. Just goes to show what they have to play with and they can do it if they want.
Important to have that repayment figure (in my case 462e) when you sit down with the dealers finance person as they will ask you what rate you got elsewhere so theyll know what they have to play with and theres no point them quoting you something higher then what you got from the bank.
Contrast this with me ringing my local BOI branch, car loan rate at 8.9% (although this was variable and would come down if fixed), quite high I said and while Id like to do business with you as I bank with you I can get 6.8% var. off UB online which you can check for yourself. He actually said well youd be better off doing that then!
Ive put this in car related issues but if someone thinks it might be better in one of the financial forums then please move.