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US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans

theguardian.com

71–80 of 252 posts

Re: US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans

#71
post #34

This has more numbers: https://www.lendingtree.com/auto/debt-statistics/ The main pattern is that people are paying a lot for cars. Looks like a lot of 6 year+ loans in the new market.

Imagine having a credit score of 300 and a $542/mo loan payment on a used car. Cursed. Americans need buses more than ever.

I live in a city with lots of buses, they are great. The problem is that they are neuropsychiatric units on wheels, there is always some crazy person being clinically crazy (like talking to imaginary friends), so that makes the whole ride something you don't want to experience often if possible.

Re: US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans

#72

One thing the article doesn't mention is deportees. The administration always says illegal immigrants but when you look the vast majority that are being deported are documented people here under some allowed process, they just haven't been granted a green card yet. Documented immigrants have work permits, social security cards, all the thing to find housing, get jobs, engage in banking etc... When they're picked up a…

There was a meme (most likely fake) post on reddit from an H1b holder who took out as many lines of credit as they could and left after the whole fee debacle. But there's that dark kernel of truth inside: if your job prospects in the country are wrecked, what's stopping people from cashing in on the way out?

Re: US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans

#73
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re probably underestimating how much credit is available to people. Having money issues? Keep paying your car while you borrow money from Klarna for your DoorDash chipotle.

Even as someone who barely cooks, I can't fathom the apparent popularity of DoorDash etc. versus the extra cost you have to pay.

When the popular running theme of complaints is "it's impossible to do X because poor people all work 168 hours a week minimum", it's easy to excuse wasting your money to save time.

Re: US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans

#74
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've got an insane bubble right now. Quantum computing stocks are valued at $50b market cap with 0 revenue and no substantial finished products. Just research.

Remember when "unicorn" companies were a big deal. Billion was significant amount of valuation and money. Lately it really feels like billion is pretty much nothing anymore. There has been inflation, but not that much to really make billion to be small sum.

The high end seems to be wildly out of control. We have $trillion+ companies now, and we are likely to see the world's first individual USD trillionaire within the next 12 months.

Re: US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans

#75
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of the dollar has already plummeted, 10% or so this year. It's expected that 2026 will have an equal dollar devaluation. This is the best-possible interpretation of the goals of this administration, the so-called Mar-a-Lago Accord that is somehow supposed to help some part of the economy. It's unclear who or how, to me.

> The value of the dollar has already plummeted, 10% or so this year. Compared to what? From Nov 3, 2024: the USD against: GBP (3)% JPY (1.7)% EUR (6.7)% INR 4.6% AUD 1.3% CAD .74% RMB .4% The EUR (if that is what you are going by) is unusually strong, and that's actually starting to cause issues. But the dollar isn't "collapsing".

https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/us-dollar-de...

Re: US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans

#76

Also worth noting the average new car is now $50k and the average new car loan is $40k+ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/10/17/50000-new... Starting to find out the risks of a car-centric society in a slow-burn economic crisis.

Yeah the average is high, that means there are cars cheaper than that. People are spending big because they either are doing no researchand getting suckered, or they are buying nicer cars for vanity reasons.

Re: US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans

#77
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you don't properly invest in the maintenance of the thing For me, it's not the money that's annoying (though of course I'm not pleased by the bills every once in a while). It's the amount of time it takes to keep a car maintained! Seems like just yesterday I took a whole day remote to sit at the mechanics shop for a tire change, but now I have to do the same for an oil change! For this precise reason I end up do…

This is my favorite thing about getting an EV; effectively zero maintenance except for tires.

I keep seeing this argument but I think about whats broken in my ice over the years: brakes, control arms, struts, suspension springs. You get a pass on gearbox but as a genuine question, do these usual mechanical problems that have nothing to do with the engine jist not happen on EVs?

Re: US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans

#78
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, this has ultimately led to revolutions.

>Historically, this has ultimately led to revolutions. Which is why they've spent the last 50 years pitting the lower classes against themselves with meaningless culture wars. In a world with F-16s, Apache helicopters, and panopticon digital surveillance, there will never be armed revolution again (nor would anyone actually want that); the only option is nonviolent resistance. But it'll never happen in the US since w…

As the Palestinian resistance has shown, the vietnamese, the cubans, etc it is very difficult to defeat a population that doesn't want to give in even if you have fancy toys and a huge kill ratio.

Re: US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans

#79
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re probably underestimating how much credit is available to people. Having money issues? Keep paying your car while you borrow money from Klarna for your DoorDash chipotle.

Even as someone who barely cooks, I can't fathom the apparent popularity of DoorDash etc. versus the extra cost you have to pay.

I mean they hide it as best they can. Big restaurants like Applebee's you'll see "2 for $28" not priced at $28 so you can guesstimate the squeeze but otherwise you kinda have to go straight to Starbucks or McDonalds using a mobile app to order your "usual" to compare "here's what it looks like if I use DoorDash, here's what it looks like if I go myself," to find that the actual delivery fee is some $20-25 per order. Even worse, I'm pretty sure that they test algorithms to try to selectively lower this for new customers so that in the early days when you're more aware of the cost it seems like a steal.

Of course, you can arrive at the $20 just by thinking, "okay, I need someone to go do an errand for me, they'll have to drive to the restaurant, wait there for 15-20 minutes, and then bring it back... so it'll cost $15 for the hour of their time plus a few bucks of overhead for the platform plus a few bucks of messed-up-my-order insurance..."

Which gets us to 5 years from now when the DoorDash killer comes out, it'll be called Kourier or something starting with a K, and it'll start with trying to give Target a way to call up some extra trained Target employees, but they're cross-trained in packaging orders for K. One person will pick up 10 carefully-packaged K-orders, take them all to the central delivery hub, they'll get sorted into driverless cars that plot through some neighborhood some 10 stops, it'll be marketed as a real Amazon-killer and fly under DoorDash's nose -- InstaCart might balk, but DoorDash won't. Until they reveal some pizza-delivery partnership and suddenly within a year every restaurant has some K-employee working for them, whose job it is to batch orders down to the bikes that come by.

Sure, delivery times for Kourier will be 75, 80 minutes long at first. People won't mind because you pay $4 for delivery instead of $20. And Doordash/Amazon won't die, Amazon will just buy Kourier and DoorDash will focus on more rural locales.

Re: US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans

#80
post #34

This has more numbers: https://www.lendingtree.com/auto/debt-statistics/ The main pattern is that people are paying a lot for cars. Looks like a lot of 6 year+ loans in the new market.

Imagine having a credit score of 300 and a $542/mo loan payment on a used car. Cursed. Americans need buses more than ever.

Does anyone else hate busses, and the only response you ever get after mentioning this is "NUH UH BUSSES CAN BE GREAT"?

A bus will pretty much always be inferior to a car. Mathematically impossible to run on time. It never gets you where you want to go, just kinda close usually. If one doesn't show up, there is no real feedback without an extensive background metadata system. Never as clean as your own car (unless you're one of those carbage-loving people I suppose, but then you're just going to litter on the bus anyways). Obnoxious, loud, smelly, or crazy people you have to deal with.

I'll never understand the crowd so desperate to have them, but I'll still support the cause if it cleans up the highways for me I guess.

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