Hi!! Am in a similar situation right now. Can you share what you did for your car ?
I'm not sure if this will help as I'm not the OP but I was in the same position and my solution is stupidly obvious but hear me out:
We paid off the car.
Now there are many factors of course: how much do you owe? How much can you put down more a month to pay it off? And the most important question is: Is the car worth bringing up anyways?
Heres what we did:
Key factors for our situation: We both work just above min wage. My spouse had to take a second job temporarily, twice, to achieve this goal faster. We were approved much faster than we initially thought for their PR card. We also live with a roommate so we don't share the higher expenses that most renting/home owners do, as everything was inclusive (For your reference we pay $500 per month for rent, + $110 for our Cellphones and $60 collectively for our Disney World and SeaWorld annual passes per month. We both make about $2k a month). We both have BAD credit scores between 450 and 510, so no personal loans or credit cards etc could be applied for.
1- We determined if this car was worth bringing up; the car despite it's high mileage (160k as this is written) has never given us issues that we couldn't afford, and most were cosmetic. The mechanical issues were only basic annual maintenance anyone should be doing with their car to keep it lasting longer. To this date, this car has been the most reliable vehicle both of us have ever owned (And we're now die hard Mazda Loyalists). We also determined via the RIV website (The Registrar of Imported Vehicles which you will deal with when it comes to exporting/importing it, but thats a whole other topic that has a master post on this section of the forums) that this car was admissible and wouldn't need much changes done outside of Day-Time Running lights to make it past inspection. (But again that's a whole other topic, but its good to see if your make and model is accepted for importation in the least. You can worry about the rest later, or research it more and tick things off the list)
2- Price: We only paid just above 12k for our car. At the time we were approved for PR, we still owed 9.7k of that loan (This was back in April), having only made min payments before hand.
3- We sat down and looked at our expenses and our budget--how much, realistically, could we put down more each month? After we divided everything, we came to the agreement to put 1k each on the car a month. (And no, not all the time did we reach that 2k goal). We also continued to pay the min required ON TOP of the added funds.
4- Sacrificing time together, mental stress, luxuries and sleep: My spouse worked a 2nd job, twice to help offset costs and move the process along quicker. This put a lot of strain on our daily lives BUT we knew when enough was enough. They took a small break, then closer to pay off, they started another job again for a month. We ate out less, opt'd for cheaper alternatives to name brands and avoided going to the theme parks a lot during this time frame.
5- After 5 months, we paid off the car and now own the vehicle.
I posted a screenshot of our transaction history to show the money going into the car each pay period.
The chances of any Canadian bank refinancing you is slim, as the US company gains nothing from doing this. They will keep you for as long as they can until you're paid and will make it difficult for you otherwise.
However, if you have a good history with this bank you got your loan from, have an amazing credit score, etc, I find most of the time they will give you the letter needed to import the vehicle but this is VERY rare. The best thing you can do is call and ask. The worst thing they're gonna say is no.
But in that case, you have other options, like selling the car back to the dealership, or seeing if by some miracle, that someone will buy out your lien. (Although this can be very difficult to do as that person needs to apply and be approved etc etc).
Have you applied yet for immigration? Maybe hold off until the car is closer to being paid off (As you will only have so much time to land after being approved which may not be enough time, depending on the factors, for you to pay off the car)?
I know it seems like the most obvious answer but it really will save the headache later. This was a huge stress for us, but we bit the bullet and got the job done. It was painful to know we were approved and could go home anytime, but we knew we couldn't go without a car and we didn't want to go about applying for a new loan and having to make double payments in two countries.
You could attempt to get a personal loan in Canada, but that can be risky as you will be starting life in Canada with a clean bill of credit history. Jumping in so brashly with a personal loan may lead you to hurting your credit if you find that is too much of a commitment. It all depends how disciplined you are and what your current credit building habits look like. Knowing our weak credit scores, we did not find this to be a smart alternative and did not want to be 10k in debt before landing foot in Canada. We wish to build our credit with easier pay off goals with credit building credit cards, as we know that's what's easier for us.
It's a catch 22, depending on YOUR habits. If you are fully confident you can pay off this loan in a decent amount of time and not miss payments (we did not feel this confident) then this will certainly give you a good foundation credit! But most Banks won't give such a high personal loan for a new resident, so I'm not sure how the person above me managed to obtain such a loan. (Unless they owed a very low sum the bank did not find risky, the bank accepted equity on their home or other assets came into play. IDK this person so I cannot say for certain what helped them get approved for a personal loan as a new resident)
Sorry, I know that is a lot of info, but I hope it kinda helps!
