Less Aggressiveness on the Auction Lanes

GAINESVILLE, GA - The movement in the market this past week required the second largest number of daily adjustments during the past year at 3,026 per day as compared to the 3,295 per day for the week ending January 13, 2012, according to Black Book. 

"The biggest difference was back in January, 54 percent of the adjustments were increases to the previous published value while this past week  that level of increases was only 36 percent, the first time we have been under 40 percent since the week ending February 24, 2012," according to Ricky Beggs, VP and managing editor for Black Book.

Why the small number of increases? "It was consistent in the comments from many dealers who indicated that retail has backed off slightly," Beggs said. "Some of the rental companies are pushing a few more models into the market with a lesser demand for the 2012 and 2011 models, thus getting less aggressive bidding activity for the latest model years. Even the increased new car sales of the last month or two has created less of a need to get all of their used inventory from auctions while also enabling some dealers to move other aged inventory to the auction lanes."

There were some really different patterns within the car and truck segments this past week, according to the Beggs on the Market report.

"Where 50 percent of the truck segment types were increases two weeks ago, this past week had only the Compact SUVs (CSU) and the Full-size Crossovers (FXU) showing positive trending by almost 0.3 percent, or $27, and 0.06 percent, or $12, for those two segment types.

Where the Luxury SUVs (LSU) led the way in the declining level this past week at -$91 the Mid-size SUVs (MSU) at -$56 were down 0.49 percent. The Mid-size Pickup segment (MPT) which has been a solid performer for half of the time during the past 3 month period, showed a surprisingly strong decline of $51 or 0.4 percent for the week. The average segment change of -$23 was the largest declining amount since the week ending March 2, 2012.

"With the way gas prices at the pump are trending we sure can’t use this as a reason for the softer truck market," Beggs said. "Over the last two weeks the national average price of regular unleaded gas has dropped another 7.5 cents to just over $3.75 per gallon. And since the declining trend began in the first week of April we have been pleased to be at $.185 less. Remember the $5.00 per gallon predictions that we would be paying at the pump when Memorial Day arrived? I am sure most of you are glad we didn’t hit that level."

The car segments could probably be credited with their change trending due to the cheaper price of gas. The smallest car segment as far as size is concerned and a segment that has higher MPG rating, the Compact Cars (SCC) gave us the first declining week over week period during the past 12 weeks. The -$20 change was still a meager -0.29%. The larger segment changes by percentage were mostly from the smaller and more fuel efficient models. Notice the -.6% change for the Entry Mid-size Cars (EMC) and the almost .4% decline with the Upper Mid-size Cars (UMC) and Entry Level Cars (ELC). The two segments with the largest $ decline at -$69 and -$56 were not attributed to economy issues. Overall the cars declined a meager .2% but at -$33, it was the largest downward $ change in over 4 months. This is also the first time I can recollect that all 10 car segments decline in the same week. I know we have witnessed that in the trucks but not the cars.

View this weeks video, below: