# Car Liens and Moving from US to Canada?



## moconnell (May 17, 2010)

We are moving from the US to Canada in three weeks and just discovered that our car loans (with US Bank) will not allow us to take the cars into Canada. Has anyone ever experienced this? I've read online that several lenders will allow you to do it, but I don't know who.

Short of paying off the cars or selling them, do we have any options? We've looked to refi them in Canada but it looks unlikely since we have no credit and they don't really do "car loans" up there (it's more of an unsecured personal loan).

Any ideas on how to go around this?


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## Auld Yin (Mar 10, 2009)

moconnell said:


> We are moving from the US to Canada in three weeks and just discovered that our car loans (with US Bank) will not allow us to take the cars into Canada. Has anyone ever experienced this? I've read online that several lenders will allow you to do it, but I don't know who.
> 
> Short of paying off the cars or selling them, do we have any options? We've looked to refi them in Canada but it looks unlikely since we have no credit and they don't really do "car loans" up there (it's more of an unsecured personal loan).
> 
> Any ideas on how to go around this?


IMO there's not really much you can do with your present lender as presumably they have a lien on the vehicle, although I don't know what they could do if you brought the cars in and maintained an excellent repayment record. Car loans are done in Canada by all the major banks and the auto makers' financing arms. 
Without knowledge of your personal finances it is difficult to think about solutions to your dilemma. Are you coming to Canada with any excess funds which could perhaps be pledged against a loan or line of credit here?


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## moconnell (May 17, 2010)

The issue is we will not be able to register the car in Ontario unless our lender is okay with it. We have good credit in the US but have no credit in Canada at this point. I don't know how keen US banks would be to offer a car loan to people leaving the country. We spoke to HSBC in Canada and they don't really do car loans on existing cars, it's more of a personal line of credit/unsecured loan. If we have to put money down to secure, we might as well just pay it off.


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## rross9000 (Jan 18, 2013)

So what exactly did you end up doing about your vehicles? We are trying to bring both of our vehicles into Canada from the US, it seems complicated short of simply paying them off. We have great credit in the US but none yet in Canada. I starting to really worry.


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