'If Sales' Turn to 'No Sales'

GAINESVILLE, GA - It was an interesting week regarding the market values, according to Black Book. The softening trend continued. The car segments were overall at very close to the level of the previous four weeks, at -$31 this past week. The lone increasing segment in the cars was the Premium Sporty Cars (PSC) at +$12.

One segment had a significantly higher decline in value for the week. That segment was the Entry Level Cars (ELC) at a change of -$80. This was the largest declining amount of any segment for a weekly period since the week ending April 27, when coincidentally, it was the Premium Sporty Cars (PSC), the lone increasing segment this past week, which declined by $96.

"As we turn to the truck segments, they took a larger step downward to a segment average change of -$60. The Mid-size Crossovers (MXU) declined by $87, while the Full-size Pickups (FPT) and the Full-size SUVs (FSU) declined by $82 each," according to Ricky Beggs, VP and managing editor for Black Book in the recent Beggs on the Market report. "A year ago the trucks declined less than half of this weekly average change amount at only -$25. The last period where the trucks declined greater than the current period was the week ending September 16, 2011, at a clip of -$69."

According to Beggs, the price of fuel sure cannot be blamed as the driver of the truck softness as the price at the pump continued its steady decline dropping another 4 cents week over week. This is now 10 consecutive weeks of declining pump prices. We are at the point of being on $.27 higher today than when the calendar turned to 2012.

"Some interesting notes as we attended the auctions and received quite a bit of dealer insight, something you can’t pick up from a data feeds, but you can hear while being in the lanes, was that the number of 'if sales,' where the seller just couldn’t pull the trigger as the high bid was close to his/her floor, but just not close enough for an instant selling decision, actually declined," Beggs noted. "The decline in 'if sales' actually slid over to the on the spot 'no sales' category where the percentage went up."

Another trend was the number of comments related to the rental cars being remarketed. There has been a slight increase in the number being offered as some of the retail rental business has not been as aggressive as the agencies had hoped for. We also noticed the higher level of no sales within this segment of the market, possibly driven by these higher mileage level units just not getting the interest and demand hoped for by the sellers.

View this weeks' video below: