How Does Car Repossession Work?

There’s something very sinister about the job title “repo man” and not just because it sounds more than a little bit similar to “reaper”. A repo man coming to take your car is not a sight you ever want to see, but why? What does car repossession in Hamilton mean, and how does it work? This article will explain.

What is Repossession?

When a car is repossessed (or Repo’d for short), it means that the bank or lender is taking ownership of the vehicle. This happens when loan or lease payments are not being met and the late payments have not been paid. 

You’ll get a notification that it’s going to happen but generally they won’t tell you when, a person will simply come around and take the car away from you, and legally they are allowed to do this since until you pay off a car loan, you don’t own the car.

The lender will then sell the car off and put the money from that sale towards your debt, however you are still required to pay off any debt that is left.

Other Problems

If all of that doesn’t sound bad enough to you, there are other problems that can be caused when a car is repossessed in Hamilton. Having a car repo’d will leave a permanent mark on your credit history that will be extremely difficult to recover.

Any additional modifications done to the car will be completely lost to you, the lender will not return aftermarket mods, however they are not legally entitled to keep anything that may have happened to be in the car like tool boxes or driving gloves, generally you’ll be sent a note of where to collect those items, but within a set time limit before they simply throw them away.

The lender will also charge you for the privilege of all this, charging you fees for the repo man’s services and any damages that may have occurred to the car during the repo process.

How to Avoid Repossession

So if you’ve received a notification about an incoming car repossession in Hamilton what can you do to prevent it? There’s a few options though none of them are easy.

You can reinstate the loan, basically pay everything you were supposed to plus a little extra to get the loan back on track, your credit score will still take the hit but the car won’t be taken away.

You can redeem the loan, paying all of the missed payments as well as all the future payments and buy the car outright, however if you could do this, you probably wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.

Or you can file for bankruptcy, this will pause the repossession for a time though filing for bankruptcy may not be the end of it, and the car may still be repo’d in the end.

Unfortunately the best way to avoid Repossession is to never end up in the situation at all.

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