Black Book’s managing editor Ricky Beggs has analyzed used vehicle pricing data for February, along with providing an outlook on upcoming market trends…
• Overall, car and truck prices are down on an annual, quarterly, and monthly basis, but cars had saw a wider decline. Cars are down 14.3% since a year ago, down 4.3% during the past three months, and 0.9% month-over-month. Trucks dropped 11.1% in price from the previous year, 2.2% on a quarterly basis, and 0.7% for the month.
• One segment of the market did pretty well – vehicles in the under-$10,000 range saw price increases during February. That was spurred partially by seasonal buying habits leveraging anticipated tax returns, and more so by positive price adjustments in fuel-efficient and small crossover segements.
• Black Book expects that additional growth in new-car sales from pent-up demand will bring in more trade-in volume and contribute to continued slow easing of prices at the wholesale level.
• Fuel-efficient segments should gain from an increase in springtime fuel prices, while pickups and small crossovers should also gain traction as service sectors purchase more vehicles for continued construction activity.