A 'Lull' in Auction Activity

GAINESVILLE, GA - Black Book is full-steam ahead into 2012 in reporting the used market for not only the auto market but with Motorcycles, RVs, medium- and heavy-duty trucks, and some pretty impressive exotic and collectible cars.

According to Black Book, even though auction attendance was solid, the activity and end-of-auction numbers resulted in a "little lull" this past week as compared to the previous week. "A few of these auction personnel were not completely surprised when they compared this third week of the year business to the previous year's for the same time period. They all seemed to think the activity and sales percentages would climb back up this coming week," said Ricky Beggs, VP and managing editor for Black Book.

Within the car segments only one segment had positive results, as the Entry Level Cars (ELC) increased for the second consecutive week. The next best performing car segments, the Upper Mid-size Cars (UMC) at -$3 and Entry Mid-size Cars (EMC) at -$11 were the best trending segments from the previous week as well.

The 14 truck segments, with an average change overall of -$18, was right in line with the average change for the previous 3 weeks, so consistency within the trucks abounds.

There were six segments that increased for the week led by the Mid-size Pickups (MPT) at a +$23 increase week over week.

"After completing the Daily market analysis, the variance in the numbers versus the previously published values required an average number of Daily adjustments of only 1,329 as compared to the very active record 3,280 per day the previous week," Beggs noted.

What was similar to the previous week was the percent of adjustments being increases at 52 percent this past week as compared to 53 percent the previous week. The average positive adjustment dollar amount was +$97 for the week while the average declining amount at -$125 was a smaller decline than the -$148 from the previous week.