Although buy-here pay-here dealerships have been around for decades, I’m always surprised by the amount of people who don’t know what that means—and by some who have never even heard the term before.

Basically, it’s a longstanding terminology used for a dealership that handles their own financing. Buy-here pay-here and in-house financing are terms that mean the dealer selling the vehicle also serves as the lender.

Being a buy-here pay-here dealership opens the doors for opportunities to handle the types of loans that traditional banks and other lenders won’t touch. Because we are our own, in-house “bank,” we interview and speak with you and understand whatever situation you’re in—or were in the past—and as a result are struggling with poor credit issues. We talk one-on-one with you to help you get those things resolved and explained up front. After we do that, we finance you ourselves.

The difference between buy-here pay-here and subprime or bank financing is mostly that those are traditional lending. When you submit an application to a bank—whether it's a local bank on the corner or online through a nationwide institution—they’re typically looking for good credit customers. In other words, people who don’t pose any risk to getting their money back.

Traditional lenders look at your basic application with just a little bit of information and a credit score. That’s it. If it falls below a certain number the answer is, “No.”

Subprime lending is a type of middle-of-the-road lender. They’re still a bank, but take a little more information, so they’re willing to take a little more risk on you than a bank is.

With in-house financing like what we offer at Barrett Motors, we run the spectrum. We have financing for people with good credit, middle-of-the-road credit, and poor credit.  We take time with you to listen and find out what your situation is. We mostly ignore your credit score and some of the things that happened to you in the past, then we figure out financing that fits your needs in a way that subprime lenders and traditional financing will not do.