Thread: Furniture loan -What scores needed?

Hi everybody.

I need to get some furniture and I don't know if my credit would be good enough to get a loan.

My FICO is at 596.

I am looking at about a $3000 loan.

Any idea of that is good enough, considering that the loan would be secured by the furniture?

Would I be better off trying to get a loan through the bank instead of the furniture company?

Thanks for any advice!

I was not able to get financing last year with a 672 score with no derogs, but then again, my credit utilization is horrible, so I don't know if that counts.


L

My husband was just approved 2 weeks ago for a 3000 furniture loan with Raymour and Flanigan. The bank that financed it was Wells Fargo Financial. His TU score (which they pulled) is a 600. We just got our new bedroom furniture delivered last weekend!

i got a 3500 revolving line of credit from a furniture store with a score in the 580's. it was handled by houselhold bank.

Which stores did you guys go to???

We were approved through the roomstore (through Beneficial), but other than that, no luck. Rooms to go sucked. Our scores range from 590 to 660.

it was a chain in detroit - Art Van

O...none of those here in TX. Household does the financing for the roomstore, but household denied us, so they ran it through Beneficial as an installment instead of revolving.

Thanks for the responses guys. More are appreciated.

Just checked my FICO and it is at 607 actually. So that would help I imagine, crossing the 600 mark.

Those of you who were turned down, was the loan to be secured by the furniture or some other property, or was it an unsecured personal loan that you requested?

Also, would it be a good idea to let the bank or furniture store put a lien on my car, which only has $400 against it and a value of $6000?

my 02:

Borrowing against the car is dangerous. What if something comes up that takes out your furniture payments? You can lose the car, ugh!

BUT, I did get financed with a similar score (around 610-620) through Furniture Row (Household finance). This was about 2 years ago, they approved me for $1k over the computer but then I called and begged for a little more, they pulled either 2 or all 3 reports, can't remember, but finally gave me $2500 which is what I was asking for. (0% for 360, no less, do they still run those promos?)

The main thing driving my score down at the time was length of history and a lot of lates that have all mercifully disappeared by now.

UPDATE:

Wow, I actually got a loan.

I decided to go ahead and try online, I've already got so many inquiries on my CRs due to two moves (landlord, utilities, etc) in the past year that I didn't care about one more. I figured I'd get declined anyways, just wanted to see what would happen.

I got approved for $3000 in an hour and a half with FICO of 607.

I applied here:

http://www.icreditcentral.com/html/b_p_secured.shtml

The loan is through American General Financial Group.

The terms are 36 months at 27% APR. Payment comes to $122/mo. Yeah, thats steep, but what can I do? I can afford it though.

They "secured" the loan against some of my personal property: a home computer, a stereo, and a TV. They didn't want to secure the furniture that I will buy with the money. No mention of placing a lien on my car either. I don't think they were doing any UCC statements though.

I think their angle was that they wanted to include some insurance coverage on the loan, which amounted to about $30/mo. I was initially quoted about $150/mo total, which I knew was extremely high. They then told me about the insurance. I told them I have plenty of insurance and don't want to spend $30/mo insuraing a $3000 note. They went ahead and took it off and just gave me the straight note.

Whole process was pretty smooth. I filled out an online application. I received a call at my office from them about 30 minutes later, and they asked questions and so forth for about 10 minutes. I got a call back an hour later saying I was approved. They have an office here in town so I was able to stop by there and close on it at the end of the day.

I read through the loan documents and they are pretty standard. (I'm an attorney and see these all the time, so these looked ok even after careful review.) Only thing that gives me pause is that they use the Rule of 78 instead of the actuarial method for determining finance charge refund. But on a loan of this size it won't amount to a whole lot of difference regardless.

So, I can get some furniture now!