Used car finance for foreigners

[zzm9980]

Anyone have any pro-tips or experiences on financing a used car if you're on an employment pass?

I had my first used car buying "experience" today. Despite every ad and everything I've seen online, the sales manager was insisting that foreigners "almost always need to put 20% down". Sorry, but I didn't really feel like putting down 20% on a 4-yr old $89k fracking Honda Civic. (an amount that would almost buy two of them outright back home... but anyway).

After some haggling, the sales manager had a "solution". He would raise the price of the car ~15% on paper. I would tell the bank the car cost his new price, and then when approved he would give me the original advertised payments based off the old price. Essentially lie to the bank I had paid the difference as a down payment. Oh, and I would have to pay him the GST on the difference between the two prices separately and up front.

So how "normal" is this? Should I expect the same treatment from all used car dealers, or was this one particularly shady? Is it possible to go to the bank here and get a loan approved up-front for a specific amount, and THEN go car shopping with the approval? Everything I've seen seems to indicate I need to put the specific car down on the loan application... A process that seems rather inefficient. (How does one buy a used car from a private party with such a system?)

[nutnut]

It's very normal!

[zzm9980]

Well, found a decently honest guy today in some small shop at Roxy Square. No major scams from him. Although, I suspect he's new, and he's never sold to a foreigner (and this is on East Coast ). He had no idea how license conversion worked. I had to show him with Google.

The only questionable thing I guess was he insisted I had to buy insurance through his guys at least for the first term, which I'm rather certain is bunk. It's OK though, I'll go with it and just change ASAP to a lower price if I can find one.

[nutnut]

You absolutely do not have to! Use your own insurance, they'll probably use whoever gives a kickback! Same with finance, you can organise your own, Maybank gives them the biggest kickback so they will possibly push you in that direction too!

Just tell them you'll get your own insurance and send it to them, cancelling and reinstating insurance is expensive and annoying!

Good luck.

[zzm9980]

cancelling and reinstating insurance is expensive and annoying!

Good luck.

How does it work in Singapore? In the US, if I have policy X and find a lower price, I just sign up for policy Y, and Company X has to cancel it and give me a pro-rated refund to the day I got the new policy. I imagine it isn't that easy here?

The finance seemed OK, they had me fill out UOB and DBS, and said we'd go with whichever one came back first.

[nutnut]

Yep, I am still trying to get my refund from previous insurer for a car I haven't owned for 3 months.... It's that kind of annoying!

Directasia seem to be fairly good for price, they are the only true online quoting system I have found and were $500 cheaper than Chartis on my recent new car! May be worth a look.

DBS is good, UOB are another one that give good kickbacks, but to be fair, as long as you stay away from Maybank (they are dire to be honest) then you should be fine!