my son’s new college roommate is from Thailand and his parents are coming for a visit to get him a small car… he said they plan to qualify for a loan. Is that allowed? I thought you had to live in the states to do that.
I took a car loan when I had been living in the United States for five days and still did not have a social security number. Lousy rate, and they wouldn’t give me longer than three years (the length of my visa). Now that I have a year of credit history and a social security number I can do pretty much what I like.
I’d be surprised if they can do this if they are just visiting.
One of the things to remember here is that if you’re from overseas, you have ZERO credit here.
All 3 bureaus will see you as a blank slate.
Even people from the UK can’t use their files to secure credit here. They MIGHT be able to use letters of credit from their bank, but I’m unsure on that.
Driver 8,
Interesting that allowed you to do that w/o a ss#, but glad it worked out for YOU; this auto loan, as I understood it from my son, would be taken out by his roommates parents who will be visiting… I doubt they’ll be able to do it and sure hope they aren’t making the trip for that primary purpose.
Mr. Slant,
I think you’re right–the ‘blank slate’ of credit history in the states will be their biggest obstacle. Now, i’m curious to how they will go about this.
thanks!
The practical difficulties aside, they certainly are allowed to do that. You can pretty much borrow money from anyone willing to loan it you.
Oh: my use of “pretty much” implies all kinds of disclaimers for specific situations, like maybe the SEC doesn’t want a bankrupt corporation to loan money to its officers or stuff like that.
IMHO, they would probably have better success getting a loan in Thailand and then transferring the money to their son (unless their credit in Thailand is poor).