Dealership financing. Dean McCrary Kia is not the lender on any deal — every approval is placed with Kia Finance America or one of our bank and credit union partners, and that funding lender is who holds your note from day one. Nothing about our process runs in-house the way a typical BHPH lot's financing does.

It happens more easily than with dealer financing. An in-house lot sets and enforces its own terms with no outside underwriter signing off on the contract, so a verbal approval is not always identical to the paperwork handed over at signing. Dealer financing runs through a separate lender whose terms are fixed before the contract ever reaches you, which leaves far less room for the numbers to shift between the test drive and the signature.

It can happen under either model, but differently. Dealer financing already starts with a separate lender as the note holder, so a later sale on the secondary market typically leaves your payment amount and terms untouched. An in-house note can be sold to a third-party collection or finance company as a business decision by the lot, which can mean the entity you owe changes with little notice — worth asking about directly before signing.

Dealer financing, generally. It originates as a standard installment contract with an established lender, which is exactly the kind of paper an outside bank or credit union is set up to evaluate and take over. An in-house note lacks that standardized structure, and if it was never reported to the bureaus, a refinancing lender has little history to underwrite against — which can make it harder to move out of than it was to get into.