It sounds like that contract was in place to prevent someone from deciding to move somewhere out of the Austin area without telling the lender where they moved

It sounds like that contract was in place to prevent someone from deciding to move somewhere out of the Austin area without telling the lender where they moved to. For moving to a different country that's basically the status quo. At the very least, you need the lienholder's authorization if you want to get the vehicle out of the country, customs will not let you export it if you don't have a clean title or authorization from whatever lienholder. It's not totally unusual for a contract to stipulate residency. It's fairly common to do that for a lease agreement. The lender is on the hook for the outstanding balance on the loan if they can't get the debtor to pay up. That collateral just up and disappearing substantially changes the risk associated with the loan. I don't see why it should be illegal to write up an agreement along the lines of "I'll loan you the money for this car, but you have to park it in the surrounding area until it's paid off". No one is claiming that the agreement required the debtor to live in that 4 county radius, just that until they owned the vehicle outright that the vehicle had to be kept there. As for the argument about how it's endangering the woman from the article, is the car hers or not? If it's in her name then this is just idle speculation that the lender would disclose that information to the abusive husband. If it's not in her name then there's nothing stopping the abuser from just contacting the lender and telling them to pound sand the car is gone. It's not like it's hard to get them to put the car up for repossession and have them pick up the car and disclose the location the next time she goes to WalMart. Even without the GPS tracker it's already commonplace for lenders to contract out repossessions to third parties who trawl parking lots and subdivisions with ALPR cameras looking for cars up for repossession.