GAINESVILLE, GA – One June 8, Black Book made value updates to 10,036 unique vehicles in a single day.

“With almost 95 percent of these adjustments increases in value, at a strong $253 average increase, we are far from being in a distressed used car market,” said Ricky Beggs, Black Book VP & managing editor.

Just over 5 percent of the decrease changes were a minimal $102 drop on average.

“The last couple of weeks have consisted of some pretty significant number of daily adjustments” noted Beggs. “The market just continues to move. Auction volumes continue to be much smaller than the auction operators would like, but at least the sales percentages are much greater than could be expected.”

Many of the adjustments are being made to the Extra Clean and Clean condition models as this reinforces the idea that really nice, good mileage used vehicles are fairly scarce in supply, and strong in demand, within the marketplace, noted Beggs. A few models were adjusted three times as the week progressed.

“The daily subscribers, in today’s conditions, are truly a step ahead, with current information on which to make their buying decisions. It’s just like the listings of the stock market in the newspaper or internet, looking at last week’s or last month’s report doesn’t report the current market,” said Beggs.

The car segment market had back-to-back weeks of positive movement. “This hasn’t happened since the early weeks of April. Seven of the 10 car segments are up for this past week. Six of these are up for the first time in at least the previous six weeks,” said Beggs.

The truck market as a whole continues its positive movement. Eleven of the 14 segments Black Book tracks were up. Two of the three down segments are in the midst of a six-week slump. With full-size bans and full-size wagons being players in more of the commercial and work-oriented markets, this trend is reflective of the tough economy and especially those of the service and delivery businesses, said Beggs.

“Recently talking to a small business operator, a true ‘Joe the plumber,’ he told me he is currently operating only four of his eight service vehicles,” explained Beggs. “In a normal economy, he might be at the point of replacing a couple of these service vans, which would make these segments trend much differently.”

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