Mouse House

Back in the days before credit cards, when a big car payment was anything over $100, there was a curious car business institution known as the Mouse House. Mouse House is a slang term for a finance company. I have no idea where the name came from; sure wish I did. Household Finance Company (HFC) and Beneficial Finance are examples of Mouse Houses, but there were many, many more.

Car dealerships used Mouse Houses to get down payment money for customers. (There were no such things as 100% loans in those days!) Car men called these loans “mouse loans”. To “mouse” somebody meant you set up a loan for them. Funny, heh?

Mouse loans were secured by the borrower’s furniture, or “sticks” as they were called. You moused somebody and tied up their sticks, it was said. I remember wondering if they actually repoed someone’s furniture if they defaulted, and I guess that’s exactly what they did.

Mouse loans were touchy. First you had to sell the idea to the down payment deprived buyer. This meant that when the desk gave you a pencil, there’d be two payments on it. The car might be $86 per month for 36 months, and the mouse loan might be $32 for 18 months. The two loans together were pretty high for those times. It was the salesman’s job to convince Billy and Betty Buyer that the almost impossible payment of $118 per month was a good deal, because it was for only half the time of the loan. After 18 months, the payment would go down to a more affordable $86 bucks. This was sometimes not an easy task, especially for a green pea like me.

While the deal was working, the finance manager would call the mouse loan in for approval. If he got it done, and if the salesman closed the customer on the idea, then the fun began.

In those days the sales managers wouldn’t let a customer loose to do anything alone except to go to the bathroom--maybe. So if the mouse loan was approved, the salesman would have to take the customer downtown to the finance company to sign up. The loan wasn’t really done until the customer spoke to the loan officer. Something could go wrong. So you had to coach the customer on what to say and what not to say. For example, you might suggest to the customer that he exaggerate the quantity and quality of their sticks.

I hadn’t been selling cars for too long when secondary loans like this were made illegal. So by about 1972 or so the Mouse House era was over. Or was it? A lot of customers still didn’t have money for a down payment, and the Mouse Houses were still interested in loaning money, so an unholy alliance was set up.

You see it wasn’t illegal for the customer, on his own, to go down and borrow some money. And if he took out a loan, the proceeds could be used for any purpose he chose. So when you were working a deal you still sold the concept of two payments. If the customer agreed, the finance manager would call the Mouse House, give them the heads up, and we’d send the customer down there to apply for a loan.

As a green pea, I still had to go with the customer. No sales manager in his right mind would let the people wander down to the Mouse House by themselves. But when you got there, you couldn’t go in with the customer. Technically, it was illegal for you to even be there, and the loan people were very nervous about that. Instead, you’d have to stand guard outside the front door and wait.

I have a memory of myself, age 21 or so. I’m standing in front of the local HFC office on the corner of “C” street and Foothill Boulevard in Hayward, California. It’s the middle of winter. It’s cold and raining. There is a small overhang over the entrance, and I’m huddled underneath it waiting. . . Those days are gone, of course. In the modern world, there is no longer any need for a Mouse House--

--but every once in a while I really get an urge to mouse somebody.


Talk to you later,



David