$1K-$10K Unsecured Personal Signature Loans – Bad Credit in Chicago, IL

We are doing a four set publication on unsecured personal loans for applicants who have bad credit, and all live in the greater Chicago area of Illinois. Because of the unique separation of neighborhoods and areas in Chicago, we can break down the service areas of all lenders involved in these loans, and the borrowers who applied for the notes.

By using the Kennedy Expressway (Interstate 90/94) and Highway 41, running along Lake Michigan we can cordon off the lending service area we used in the $2500 unsecured loan which was borrowed over a three month term. Then, stretching out from Chicago, we can take another section South of the Kennedy Expressway, and North of Dwight D. Eisenhower Expressway (Interstate 290) where we chose a borrower’s transaction in the Oak Park area of Chicago. As you can see by the table this borrower borrowed $5500 for a six month term.

Then we simply move on to the third applicant who borrowed $6000 in unsecured cash for a nine month term, coming from another cordoned off area of greater Chicago, between Dwight D. Eisenhower Expressway and Interstate 55 (Stevenson Expressway). For the fourth loan we moved to a borrower in the Tinley Park and Orland Park of South Chicago. This is a vast area of lending activity all stretching from the Chicago Midway International Airport, down and through to the Lake Michigan West shore and the Western border of Indiana, which includes Calumet City, Hammond, Lansing, Park Forest, Harvey, and Tinley Park.

The numerous lenders for these areas of Chicago are very busy considering different loan applications and different customers for inclusion in their lending programs, and are constantly evaluating the viability of lending money to people who have bad credit. They have to take into account the applicant’s employment, DTI, FICO score, and recent credit history. None of these loans are payday loans – they are all unsecured personal loans under $10,000, and all of these applicants were approved for funding – and were funded within two weeks of applying. Every one of these applicants used our pre-application process to find lenders in the Chicago area who do business with customers who have poor credit scores.

As with all of our city-based lending publications, we have endeavored to present lenders and borrowers from all areas surrounding Chicago, and also included is a lender/borrower transaction that took place right near the downtown Chicago area.

We have used the same imagery as in previous publications to show the general area in which the borrower is living. We have protected each borrower’s identity, and we only use information garnished with permission from all lenders and borrowers involved in the following loans. We have kept the increment of $500 in loan amounts for the different service areas. Each table shows what the average mean loan amounts approved by the lender mentioned in the approved loan we used respectively.

$2500 Bad Credit Unsecured Personal Signature Loan in Downtown Chicago

Our first loan is for $2500 and it was an unsecured cash loan that was applied for by a 28 year old man living in the Oakwood Apartments on W. Huron St. in Chicago. He is sharing rent with three other roommates who all work in downtown Chicago and commute from Madison, Rockford, and Davenport Illinois.

This particular borrower grew up in Joliet and is an engineer currently working for a company that has its main offices located not far from Printer’s Row. He needed to borrow $2500 for a family emergency which he didn’t fully disclose in his pre-application, and we should add that it is not necessary to provide absolute detail on the purpose of a loan, because most of these loans would have to be considered all purpose loans.

All of this customer’s personal accounts are with the Chicago Community Bank on W. Jackson Blvd. and his accounts have been with this bank for over five years. When he applied to get his Visa card limit raised he was declined, and he didn’t have any kind of option in regards to a home-equity loan because he didn’t have any property in his name at the time of application.

So after he was declined by his bank he tried the Amalgamated Bank of Chicago to see if he could get a line of credit, a new credit card, or perhaps a personal loan. This endeavor proved to be a failure as well, and he was at that point considering asking a friend, colleague, or family member for a low interest loan. He decided to keep on trucking, and tried applying with the First Merit Bank on N. Clark St., also in downtown Chicago.

After all three of these attempts failed (getting approved for a small credit amount of $2500) he decided to try finding lenders who specifically lend money to people who have bad credit – lenders that specialize in lending money to people who have really bad credit scores, and have reasonable interest rates for consumers who are trying to start over and rebuild their credit. Most of what he found on the Internet was half-baked predatory lending institutions who prey on the unfortunate minority (and growing) who have somehow ended up in a tight financial situation.

The first loan that we have discussed here in downtown Chicago, was finalized with an APR of 11.72%, with the lender getting repaid a total amount of $2548.82 over a three month term. The final payment on the loan was $34.41, and the total interest made by the lender was a paltry $48.80. As with most lenders, the lender in this example works on high volumes in order to create as much profit as possible, and their focus of clientele is mostly based in the North Chicago area, stretching from downtown, and all the way up through Ravenswood Gardens, Wildwood, Lincolnwood, Evanston, Glenview, Mount Prospect, Wilmette, Northfield, Northbrook, Buffalo Grove, Barrington, Arlington Heights, Prospect Heights, McHenry, and Crystal Lake.

$5500 Unsecured Bad Credit Personal  Signature Loan in Chicago (Oak Park)

Our next borrower lives in Forest Park, which is east of Maywood, and West of Oak Park. She is a administrative assistant for a Research Council that works at Loyola University Health Science Campus. She needed to borrow $5500 quickly in order to solidify some personal investments she had been working on during late 2011. She didn’t own her vehicle at the time of her application, and she didn’t have any real estate to her name either. She didn’t have any kind of collateral to use as security on the note she was applying for, and you can see that her FICO score was relatively low at 620.

She made the pre-application for a 6% APR request on $4000. This was also unsecured cash that she wanted to borrow over a six month period with one month installments that would be affordable. She had no interest in any high interest predatory lending scam, and was carefully combing the Internet for legitimate and reputable lenders in the Chicago area. You will see a large discrepancy between the interest rate the applicant requested and the actual interest rate that she was finally agreed to on the contract between borrower and lender – more than double the APR than requested in the pre-app.

This applicant has all of her accounts at the Metropolitan Bank on N. Harlem Ave., and this includes her savings account, checking account, and car loan. She was declined for a request of extra credit in any amount with this bank, and she decided to apply for a new credit line at the American National Bank and Trust on Lake Street which is in the heart of Oak Park Illinois. She couldn’t get any kind of loan with this bank either, and soon found herself looking for an online loan. As we mentioned above, she ended up getting an APR of 15.55% on the six-month term.

You can see the table below for more information on this unsecured personal loan.

$6000 Unsecured Bad Credit Personal Signature Loan in Chicago (Naperville/Bolingbrook)

For this next loan we are going to take a borrower transaction in the Napperville and Bolingbrook area, which is a large suburban area West of Chicago – between Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway and Highway 55.

This borrower does his banking at the Associated Bank on W. Galena Blvd. and the Fox Valley Credit Union on North Broadway, Aurora Illinois. These were the initial bank accounts that he had when he was growing up in Aurora, Yorkville and Oswego. He now works in Bolingbrook, at Bolingbrook’s Clow International Airport. He couldn’t get any help from any of the conventional banks all throughout the area of Aurora, Montgomery, Oswego, Yorkville, Plainfield, Bolingbrook, and Napperville. He decided it was time to use the Internet to try getting approved for an unsecured loan.

This borrower wanted to borrow $8000, with an interest rate of 5% over a period of 18 months. As you can see in the table, they were approved for a $6000 loan or a nine month term, at 9.11%. A far cry from what he desired in the way of funding.

Over the nine month term he paid $227.71 in interest, and paid back the lender $6227.71 in total. The final closing payment on the unsecured loan was $85.30. The lender in this case does allot of work in the Broadview, Westchester, Downers Grove, Lyons, and Berwyn area of Illinois, but recently branched out to provide unsecured loans to applicants who have bad credit ratings as far out as Aurora.

This is another bad credit lender that is extremely aggressive and tries to keep interest rates as low as possible, working on volume, and trying not scare away potential customers with extremely high APR. This company is based out of downtown Chicago, with offices in the Bolingbrook and Downers Grove area.

This $6000 loan taken out by this borrower was used to pay for a used car that was required as a second vehicle for the family. He has a wife and two children, and recently his wife had to get a job to help the family earn some extra money as they weren’t making it each month anymore.

$9000 Unsecured Bad Credit Personal Signature Loan in Chicago (Tinley Park/Orland Park)

Our last loan in today’s publication for the Chicago area takes place in the Orland Park, Tinley Park, and Oak Forest area. This borrower is a young woman who needed to pay off the last of her student loans – to the tune of $9000 (actually, only $8000, but she needed to pay some bills for around $1000 all in one full swoop).

She works at the Silverlake Country Club as a waitress, and has been doing so to put herself through school the last five years. She is currently looking for a job in her field, which is in child psychology. Unfortunately, she has not been able to find a job in her chosen career field and is still only making money through tips and monthly base-earnings at the country club. She needed to borrow this $9000 within a week of applying for the loan, but it actually took about a week and a half before a private lender managed to come through with a deal for her.

She requested an APR below 10% but was finalized at 13% on the $9000 note. This loan was for a 12 month term (one year if you prefer) and the payments were $791 per month. The final closing payment on the loan was $131.91. Total monies paid back to the lender was just over $9600. The lender in this case has an office in South Holland, Illinois and this is a private lender – a single individual who dabbles in lending money to applicants who have extremely poor credit. This borrower however, doesn’t have what I would call extremely poor credit because her credit score is 623 – not the worst case scenario, and usually someone like this can get a loan with a conventional bank – at a higher interest rate.

Unfortunately for her, she had defaulted on many of her payments on her credit cards and her personal loan that she had with the Bank of America. She also had a few payday loans that were overdue and have been defaulted on as well. She had some trouble with the cash advance industry in the past and that was causing her a lot of grief.

She wasn’t able to get approved with anybody until she came across a lender who considers applicants who have steady work, and poor credit ratings. This lender interviews each possible borrower in a very personal way, and screens people differently than any conventional bank does. His lending style is somewhat like the old wild wild west, when borrowers were considered for lending based on more criteria than just a credit score.

This applicant managed pay off all of her existing student loan, and looked after those miscellaneous bills that were creeping up around her. She was extremely grateful to this lender, and to this day no single borrower with bad credit has ever defaulted on their payments with this lender. This is what he tells us anyway.