GAINESVILLE, GAThe market place is extremely busy with interest and demand for used vehicles at almost record levels, according to Black Book.

"This week after extensive analysis, Black Book editors adjusted almost 2,100 vehicles on average each day throughout the week. This is the second highest level of adjustments for a weekly period for the last year. Only the week ending April 8, 2011, with over 2,200 adjustments per day has been a more active wee," said Ricky Beggs, Black Book VP & managing editor.

The percentage of adjustments being increases in values turned back to a more positive trend this week, almost reaching the 50-percent level, after a very anemic 29 percent the previous week. According to Beggs, many dealers commented throughout the week that their retail lots were fairly full and with the strong prices they are trying to avoid getting too heavy of an inventory. This might be supporting the high, but leveling off somewhat, in the prices.

The car segments continue to be the stars of the show with an overall change of $45 for the week, now on the positive side for 11 consecutive weeks.

"With nine of the 10 segment types having a positive week of adjustments overall, the strength of the Entry Level Cars (ELC) was a rather impressive increase week over week of $158, the strongest segment change amount of any segment type since January 1, 2011," said Beggs.

Since the first of the year, the Entry Level Car (ELC) segment as a whole has increased $1,017. Looking at the Entry Level Cars (ELC) that were three years old last year at this time and the model year that is three years old today, that increase in value is up by 28.99 percent, or almost $1,900.

"As I said during a presentation this past week to a very progressive group of independent leasing companies and vendors at the annual NVLA Conference in Chicago, if the cars weren’t so strong, we would be talking about the solid retention levels of the trucks, vans and utility models," said Beggs.

For only the third time in the past 10 weeks has the overall change for the trucks been below the $0 baseline, declining this week by $20.

Only four of the segment types increased this past week, lead by the Compact SUVs (CSU) and Compact Crossovers (CXU) at $31 and $28 respectively. The Full-size Crossovers (FXU) changed directions after four consecutive weeks of declining values increasing by $9 during the week. We are also reporting a $6 increase for the Mid-size Pickups (MPT).

The four segment types with the largest declines were all from the full-size models. For the fifth consecutive week the Full-size Pickups (FPT) declined, this week by $92. The Full-size SUVs (FSU) have declined every week during the last 3 months, -$91 this past week. The Full-size Cargo and Passenger Wagons (FVC, FVW) took their first turn below the $0 baseline over the past 9 weeks, this past week at -$44 and -$51 respectively.

Beggs commented on what else he sees in the forefront of the industry.