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Does A Car Lease Affect My Credit?
September 12th, 2008
Here’s a question from a reader:
Does signing a car lease and making those payments impact personal credit in any way? The short answer is, “It may.”
If the car lease is a personal lease, and is reported to the credit reporting agencies (most are, but not all), it will affect your credit. Whether it helps or hurts depends on all the other information in your credit report. If you already have a lot of debt and payments, then it could be negative. If not, it may be a positive.
Even if the lease doesn’t impact your score much, it can affect your credit in other ways. I recall one entrepreneur, for example, who was charged a higher rate for her mortgage due to an expensive car lease payment that appeared on her credit report. Except it wasn’t hers. When she got it removed, her interest rate improved.
If the vehicle is leased under a business lease, and does not appear on your credit report, then it will not affect your personal credit.
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