Lenders toughen auto-loan standards

Some companies are limiting terms and requiring larger down payments.

CLEVELAND (AP) — The national credit crunch isn’t just squeezing the housing market, it’s also making auto loans more difficult.

Lenders are tightening their standards for car loans and that means bigger down payments and monthly installments. Some buyers looking for new midsize sedans are settling for used compact cars and others cannot even afford those.

CitiGroup, one of the nation’s biggest financial firms, has cut about 800 jobs in its auto lending business and says it plans to scale back the number of loans it offers.

“People with decent credit aren’t able to get the terms they think they should get,” said Michelle Primm, managing partner of the Cascade Auto Group in Cuyahoga Falls. Primm also represents women dealers in the Eastern U.S. for the National Automobile Dealers Association.

Mary Kay Bean, spokeswoman for JP Morgan Chase, said her company is requiring larger down payments than before and is limiting terms to six years for buyers with lower credit scores.

Bill Miller, a Cleveland State University student who works full-time as a mechanical engineer, said he tried to buy a car a few months ago and couldn’t get credit anywhere.

Miller’s status as a college student with a C-minus credit rating and some credit card debt told him getting a loan would be a challenge, but he didn’t think $7,000 for a used car would be out of line for him and his girlfriend.

“We were declined and declined and declined. I thought I rebuilt my credit, at least to the point of getting a car loan,” Miller said. “I guess not.”

Scott McKown, finance and insurance director for the Classic Auto Group in Mentor, said competition among lenders as recently as last year allowed dealerships to sell cars to people who typically couldn’t afford them.

“In a lot of cases, we’d say, ’Boy, I hope the customer can pay this,”’ McKown said. “These guys tended to specialize in that low end of the business.”

The loan squeeze could lead to lower sales in a year that has been one of the worst in a decade. As with the collapse of the mortgage business, lenders blame the tightening of auto credit terms on Wall Street.