Not sure if this qualifies here but after reading a recent denial for lease post thought I’d ask.
What is a good brand (Honda, Toyota etc…) to get started with leasing?
As a first lease with credit card history but no loan history. I’m personally looking for a car to lease so this would help to narrow down my search to specific brands only and not waste any time on those who wouldn’t approve it. Thank you
If you’re looking to buy, your best bet would be a credit union. Then you could buy any car within your budget, as you’re not relying on the captive finance arm to approve you, thus pigeon holing you into 1 brand just because that captive has easier approval odds for a newbie.
Sorry I wanted to say lease a car. Financing is something I considered but I prefer leasing.
Without seeing your credit report, as well as your overall financial picture, nobody can really give you an answer. Anything provided is an educated guess only.
That said, Ford and GM are usually lenient.
In my experience vw is pretty aggressive
From my experience last year, Subaru did not care about loan history. GM finance specifically asked me to provide a cosigner who has auto loan/leasing history. My original cosigner has good and long credit history, but no auto loan history. Denial letter stated “no prior loan history” as first reason for denial. Financing, like mp11477 suggests, is easier. GM dealer told me I’m good to finance but not lease.
So what did you end up going with? I had a friend who got denied for Honda leasing and got approved for Toyota leasing with less than 1 year of credit history, about 10 months history.
VW was easy on my first lease.
From what I’ve been told, Volvo does not have credit tiers. If you have more than a 600 Fico Auto 8 you’re approved (experian I believe).
I ended up with a BMW loaner. My BMW dealer told me that they thought they could push my app through, and they did. Before this dealer, I was denied by BMWFS, the first reason stated in the letter was also “no prior loan history”. The other reasons are “credit lines age too short” and “not enough credit lines”. Btw, after all these credit pulls, my FICO went from 780 to 730. Also got denied by MBFS and Toyota for a Lexus. My app got aprroved with 730. It was a 10 months process. 
Doesn’t sound that bad ending up with a BMW though. But yeah the hit in credit score and the length you took to get a car is shocking.
Agreed. I didn’t really need a car and still don’t. Seattle has many other options than owning a car. I was focusing on getting a good deal and a brand that allows lease transfer. It’s hard but achievable. Good luck!
Inquiries alone don’t have this much impact on FICO scores. Not even close.
When I was going to lease my first car in 2016, I wanted an Infiniti Q50 Red Sport. At that time I had tier 1 credit, however I had no school, auto, home loans just 1 credit card that I always paid on time. The salesperson ran my credit and I was denied the car, but he didn’t just run my credit once, he ran it a total of 8 times without my permission. My score tanked from a 740 to a 690 from all the inquiries. 2 months later when it recovered a bit I found a broker and he managed to get me a fully loaded Lexus IS 300 F Sport. Apparently Lexus is pretty lenient with lending from what I’ve heard and seen for myself.
FICO scores all auto loan inquiries made within 30 days as one inquiry.
Directly from the source: How Do Credit Inquiries Affect Your FICO Score? | myFICO
When you discussed financing a car, you gave the dealer permissible purpose to run your credit.
Permissible purpose defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act: 15 U.S. Code § 1681b - Permissible purposes of consumer reports | U.S. Code | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
The FCRA doesn’t limit how many times your credit file can be pulled once permissible purpose is established. You do not need to explicitly give permission even once, let alone eight separate times.
He has told he did it in 2016. FICO got this new rule only recently so it could be true. But FICO compresses all the inquires if its from the same bank right?
But sounds about right of the hard pulls though
Thats nice to hear about Lexus, I thought it was a luxury brand and hard to lease out so makes sense. That hit of credit pulls though. How did your broker help out to get the lease through?
The Infiniti dealer tried through a bunch of different banks and it was pretty disheartening to get rejected all those times and getting all that mail for the rejections.
The broker tried a month later for the same car since I had my heart set on it, but it was denied as well. He asked me if I wanted anything else and at that time my neighbor just bought a new Lexus IS 300 F Sport and I thought it was awesome so I told him I wanted that fully loaded. Not even a few hours later he said he had the car in his possession and I told him I’d be there right away to pick it up.
When I asked him why Lexus accepted my credit he said they are much more forgiving with credit. A co worker of mine who only buys Lexus told me the same thing. They apparently are very hell-bent on customer service.
There is a bit more nuance to the 30-day window (read the “Rate Shopping” section of the FICO article I linked – older models use 14 days, newer models use 45), but counting multiple inquiries of the same type in some reasonable period of time for scoring purposes goes back as far as I can remember.
Can comfirm what Klax said about Lexus. My Lexus denial letter metioned nothing on loan history but “can’t verify the current address”. I was assuming lease, and dealing with Lexus financial service by myself. Since I just moved across states at the time, I provided extra documents, and they were able to “lost” my documents twice in addition to their snail processing time. It was a bad experience.
The relevant law predates 2016 by a long time.