With equipment manufacturers offering 0% interest loans on new equipment and contractors gearing up for spring, construction equipment finance companies are predicting a strong year for their business.
Interest rates remain low for new and used equipment. Lenders also say credit supply remains ample, and loan approvals are still at typical ratios.
“Now is a good time to buy,” says Peter Gregory, senior vice president for Wells Fargo Equipment Finance. “Rates are very low. They're expected to stay low.”
Wells Fargo has been working with manufacturers to tailor 0% interest loans. “Those are products that the manufacturers will use to entice customers to buy equipment and those are for all contractors,” he says.
“Everybody's doing that, whether it's 36, 42 to 48 months,” adds Corey Kovarik, vice president of the Retail Finance Division at Komatsu Financial. “That seems to be what we're doing and what the competition is doing. I think anytime you can get 0% people like that.”
The upbeat mood is a far cry from last year at this time when the pandemic created lockdowns and questions as to whether the construction industry would collapse, possibly even worse than the Great Recession.
When the pandemic started in March, so did calls to construction-equipment finance companies.
