A Return to Active Auction Lanes

GAINESVILLE, GA - As Black Book completed a week of market study and making the necessary adjustments, it was obvious that most dealers and commercial accounts were on a similar path, according to Ricky Beggs, VP and managing editor for Black Book.

"The sales through the various auction channels were more stable than not, as the average number of vehicles being adjusted each day was 1,520 per day," said Beggs. This was a little less than almost every week since the end of July 2011. "Another sign of the market being ready to do business was that 33 percent of the adjustments were increases, the largest level since the week ending June 24, 2011."

Even though all 10 car segments declined in value, the overall average segment decline was just -$33, the smallest average decline since the week ending July 22, 2011, according to Beggs.

"The car segments were more consistent and stable this week with only a $21 variance from the largest adjustment to the smallest. The previous week the high to low variance was $123. Another interesting pattern was that four segments had the smallest decline for at least the last 12 weeks. A couple of these segments, the Prestige Luxury Cars (PLC) at -$51 and the Premium Sporty Cars (PSC) at -$31 are typically the segments with the largest weekly change. The Luxury Level Cars (LLC) and the Near Luxury Cars (NLC) were the other 2 segments with smaller than normal change levels," Beggs noted.

The truck market did have two segments that increased in value this past week, the Luxury SUVs (LSU) which increased by $6 and the Compact Pickups (CPT) at an $11 improvement. For 4 of the past 5 weeks the Compact Pickups have increased in value. The -$21 average segment change for the trucks was almost double the declining amount of the previous week's -$11. Most importantly, the -$21 average decline was the second smallest since the -$18 for the week ending June 3, 2011. If you were to exclude the -$123 change within the Full-size Crossovers, the high/low variance within the truck segments was almost double the car variance but still a respectable $40 spread.

"As we completed the first week of market study for 2012, we were able to publish the first market driven used values for 22 additional models," Beggs said. "I think this could be attributed to the flurry of new car sales activity during December giving confidence that newer models are now getting more consumer interest, thus more moving through the wholesale channels."