Buy here, pay here
type of used car dealership
In the used car market in the United States and Canada, buy here, pay here, often abbreviated as BHPH, refers to a method of running an automobile dealership in which dealers themselves extend credit to purchasers of automobiles. Typically, purchasers of cars at BHPH dealerships have poor credit history, and loans have high interest rates. BHPH can provide options for those unable to meet credit standards elsewhere.
History and background
The BHPH Industry originated primarily in the early 1970s during the United States savings and loan crisis. With many similarities to the 2008 financial crisis, credit was difficult to obtain, unemployment was rising, and the economy was still in a transformation from a production-based economy to a service-based economy.
Automobile dealers who still wanted to sell cars had to find a way to deal with the increasing price of vehicles relative to income. They had to sell these vehicles to wary consumers who were unwilling or unable to pay cash for the new purchase at the point of purchase. In many cases, when banks would not lend to the consumer, the automobile dealer would start a related finance company (RFC) and have the finance company approve the loan on the vehicle. This represented a step into the consumer finance business for automobile dealers. The advantage to the dealership of having an RFC finance was decreased risk on the sale and finance of the vehicles sold.
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This entry incorporates text from “Buy here, pay here” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.