CPO Financing

[Skotty]

I didn't see a thread specific to CPO financing, so I'm starting one.

This is for CPO purchases only! Things are different between CPO and new.

First important nugget of information -- Tesla's lending partners supposedly only loan up to 80% of the purchase price. Many other credit unions also have limits on lending percentage. The ever popular Alliant Credit Union limit is 90%. Plus you need to add in taxes, which can run an additional $5,000+ out of pocket.

Beware! Make sure you check that your preferred institutions will lend up to the percent you need before buying. Many people have enough equity in their trade-ins, but if you don't, this could put you in a serious pinch if you weren't expecting it and you have most of your wealth tied up in assets without enough liquidity. I'm tight on free cash myself, but I wasn't too worried as my own credit union will finance 100%. But I didn't realize other lending institutions are more tight lipped.

Also, Alliant has a rate discount through the end of this month: 0.25% rate discount on 72- and 84-month loans. That can put the rate down to as low as 2.24%, if I understood them correctly.

This information dated 3/3/2016.

 

[MsElectric]

Just as an added FYI, Earth Motorcars will actually lease CPO Tesla cars.

Two things to watch for: Their money factor is high BUT negotiable if you approach it the right way.

Also their leases are "open ended" so if you will be on the hook for any difference if the car is worth less than the residual by the time your lease is over.

Good thing if you own a business is you can set a super low residual and essentially end up deducting most of the value of the car and then buy out the car for very little at the end of the lease.

 

[dgpcolorado]

My CPO loan through Tesla's lending partners is 90%, so I don't get your 80% limit. I was given two quotes, 60 months @2.74% from Chase and 72 months at 3.09% from TD Bank. I have very low income but a high credit score (800, recently down to 794 thanks to the credit inquiries) so that surely affects the quotes I received. YMMV.

 

[kwjayhawk]

Curious to know of local lenders in KC. Hoping to pay in cash, but if there are credit unions that have experience with EV in the area I would be apt to look into it. Sent a PM regarding any local names/loan officers.

 

[Skotty]

My CPO loan through Tesla's lending partners is 90%, so I don't get your 80% limit. I was given two quotes, 60 months @2.74% from Chase and 72 months at 3.09% from TD Bank. I have very low income but a high credit score (800, recently down to 794 thanks to the credit inquiries) so that surely affects the quotes I received. YMMV.

The 80% figure came from my Tesla Delivery Experience guy, when I asked about it. Another case of Tesla employees not exactly being a reliable source of information?

 

[Skotty]

Alliant process was extremely easy. The only catch was that if you are using the online form, get all of your information ready in advance before filling out the form, as it can time out on you and lose some of the information.

 

[Skotty]

Another thought. We decided to apply for financing about a week prior to planned delivery. I feel this came out about right in the timing. It was close enough to be pretty sure the car would be ready, but far enough that we could get everything done without feeling any panic or rush.

It actually doesn't take much time, but there are delays in the back and forth between you, Tesla, and financing institution. For us, we applied online on a Saturday (which is basically like applying on Monday morning), and were signing the final financing paperwork on Wednesday evening. That was with Alliant who were very easy to work with. So it still took a few days. It went kind of like this: get initial loan approval, then back to Tesla to get a final Motor Vehicle Purchase Agreement (MVPA), then have to get MVPA back to the financing institution, then financing institution sends paperwork to sign (in our case, we were able to do this quickly using Docusign), then report back to Tesla to verify all is ready. And somewhere in there, we had to get insurance set up as well. There were delays in the back in forth through all of that.