Used Car Prices

[RANGERS]

Amongst all the furore about post-Brexit and pandemic related shortages of just about everything, I took my car in to the main dealer for service the other day and spotted a near identical model on the forecourt priced significantly higher than I’d paid for mine 18months ago.

 

Talking to the sales guy, he reckoned used values are up around 20% on the most popular models compared to a year ago on account of the lack of supply of new cars. Shortage of micro-chips, shortage of delivery drivers, shortage of shipping capacity amongst other things being the cause.

 

Curiosity got the better of me and a popular car buying site confirmed that 18 months and 18000 miles down the line, their bid for my car would be circa £1100 more than I paid for it. As running costs have been minimal, even the service cost was included in the original deal, I could actually make a profit on 18000 miles of motoring!

[kevinlms]

46 minutes ago, RANGERS said:

Amongst all the furore about post-Brexit and pandemic related shortages of just about everything, I took my car in to the main dealer for service the other day and spotted a near identical model on the forecourt priced significantly higher than I’d paid for mine 18months ago.

 

Talking to the sales guy, he reckoned used values are up around 20% on the most popular models compared to a year ago on account of the lack of supply of new cars. Shortage of micro-chips, shortage of delivery drivers, shortage of shipping capacity amongst other things being the cause.

 

Curiosity got the better of me and a popular car buying site confirmed that 18 months and 18000 miles down the line, their bid for my car would be circa £1100 more than I paid for it. As running costs have been minimal, even the service cost was included in the original deal, I could actually make a profit on 18000 miles of motoring!

All very well if you don't need a vehicle, but if you need to buy a replacement, then it doesn't work.

[DY444]

17 minutes ago, RANGERS said:

Amongst all the furore about post-Brexit and pandemic related shortages of just about everything, I took my car in to the main dealer for service the other day and spotted a near identical model on the forecourt priced significantly higher than I’d paid for mine 18months ago.

 

Talking to the sales guy, he reckoned used values are up around 20% on the most popular models compared to a year ago on account of the lack of supply of new cars. Shortage of micro-chips, shortage of delivery drivers, shortage of shipping capacity amongst other things being the cause.

 

Curiosity got the better of me and a popular car buying site confirmed that 18 months and 18000 miles down the line, their bid for my car would be circa £1100 more than I paid for it. As running costs have been minimal, even the service cost was included in the original deal, I could actually make a profit on 18000 miles of motoring!

 

It seems to me to be largely academic unless you decide you don't need a car at all or decide to downgrade to a cheaper model.  There's virtually no discounting on new vehicles because most dealers have little or no stock, and used prices are up across the board so what you gain on a trade in you lose on the replacement. 

 

I always buy in a buyer's market and it's as far as you can get from that at the moment.  My rule of thumb, when buying new anyway, is based on how many of the model I'm interested in has the dealership network got in stock or on order.  My own preferred marque helpfully provides this information on its website.  When I bought my current chariot there were dozens and I duly negotiated a very hefty discount.  I've just checked and there are two, neither with an options spec that appeals to me and both in hideous colours!

[njee20]

Same position for me. I’m being offered £3000 more than I paid 18 months ago. I bought the car at 6 months old, there’s since been a new model, and with the more favourable rates and dealer contributions on new models the monthly payments would be less on a new car! I’m sure the economics wouldn’t actually stack up, I’d get shafted on the tax and what not, but still, tempting proposition. Could easily survive on one car for 6 months until a new one was ready…

[Ron Ron Ron]

Used car prices became very strong towards the end of last year and started to increase then.

This year they've continued to rise.

 

When I took one of our cars to the main dealer (Mercedes-Benz) for its annual service, back in June, I noticed that their large used car section was looking slightly depleted.

It's usually very neatly laid out and quite full, with I guess maybe an average of possibly 40 - 50 cars, or so.

Exclusively used and ex-dem Mercedes. No other brands.

 

This time round, towards the back were a small number of maybe 5 or 6  Audi's, Jaguars and a BMW. Most unusual !!

I was chatting to the service agent when dealing with the paperwork and bill and he said they couldn't get enough part-ex and used Mercedes in to feed the used car side of the business.

 

I obtained a couple of different online valuations for my wife's car at the beginning of this year and recently repeated the same exercise, 2 weeks ago.

(note: not from car buying sites)

The theoretical values they gave have increased over the 6 months, by between £1,500 and £2,000.

 

That "popular car buying site", who say they'll buy any car, valued the car at over £2,000 the trade-in figure that the dealership offered against a new purchase and about £1,000 above what I thought might be a top price we could get from a private sale (using Autotrader averages for the same age, mileage and condition).

They've since been sending regular follow up emails, increasing their offer gradually to another £500 on top.

 

My neighbour says the way they operate, is to reduce the offer bit by bit, as they go through their inspection check list. Which is what I suspected.

Still, even if they knocked off a total of  £1,000 from their offer, it could be a very good selling price, being 45% of the new purchase price we paid......7 years ago !!!!!!!

 

 

 

.

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

That "popular car buying site", who say they'll buy any car, valued the car at over £2,000 the trade-in figure that the dealership offered against a new purchase and about £1,000 above what I thought might be a top price we could get from a private sale (using Autotrader averages for the same age, mileage and condition).

They've since been sending regular follow up emails, increasing their offer gradually to another £500 on top.

 

My neighbour says the way they operate, is to reduce the offer bit by bit, as they go through their inspection check list. Which is what I suspected.

 

My Leaf's valuation rose from £4,815 in Feb to £6,665 this week. I'd traded it in in June.

 

Their inspector would have a field day with all the scrapes & dents in it. Mechanically perfect but externally the unluckiest car I've ever had.

[sjp23480]

Took my BMW for a service this week and noticed the showroom was only 2/3rd full. Speaking to the service manager he disclosed that they hadn't had any new cars for many weeks.  All the cars in the showroom were 2ndhand.  He had no idea when they might get new stock.

 

[DY444]

35 minutes ago, sjp23480 said:

Took my BMW for a service this week and noticed the showroom was only 2/3rd full. Speaking to the service manager he disclosed that they hadn't had any new cars for many weeks.  All the cars in the showroom were 2ndhand.  He had no idea when they might get new stock.

 

 

To an extent that is a chicken and egg though because dealers order cars on risk for display, demonstration and sale in the expectation of selling them quickly however new buyers are in short supply because of the uncertainty.  A broker I was talking to this week reckoned the typical BMW delivery time of 4 - 8 weeks, depending on model, had doubled, which in the context of many manufacturers currently isn't too bad in the circumstances.  Discounts, even for brokers, are unsurprisingly way down though. 

 

I saw a report which suggested BMW are in a better position than most of the major manufacturers because they have the most robust contracts in the industry with electronic suppliers which gives them priority when there is a shortage.  In other words they are getting more parts than most of the others but a lot less than normal.

[Welly]

I'll just have to keep my 07 Polo going!

[Vistisen]

I sold my wife's car for double what the dealer would give me. It took  less than two minutes after the advert  was  online. After ten minutes, I had 11 different telephone number on my incoming calls list. I think I might have got a bit more for it!

[Michael Hodgson]

It's like saying you are a lot richer because the price of houses has gone up so much.  

 

How to get rich quick - sell your house and car, get a job driving HGVs and immediately ask for a pay rise, living in the cab of your lorry.  

That is how Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Richard Branson did it didn't they? 

[Chops]

14 years ago, my '76 Dodge Mirada, which I purchased from a junk yard, finally choked and died beside the road, etiology unknown to this day. I purchased, brand new, a 2007 Hyundai Accent, a car which I dislike intensely, all the more so that it has never stranded me. It has 252,000 miles (408773 km) and refuses to die. Wonder what it is worth now? 

[PMP]

Interesting to read how ‘we buy any car’ have upped their prices. Before C19 I got a quote on one of mine which was below a ‘shed’ price for a typical similar model. They followed it up with a few emails dropping the price without having seen it.  A friend had to sell her late fathers 911 last year and their bid was actually at the lower end of typical private sales, which was a surprise change. 

A friend works for them and yep their standard technique is to bid, and then, unsurprisingly chip away rapidly at ‘sale’ inspection time, but that’s no different to any motor trade PX offer.

 

Looking at a s/h car this week the dealer said as above re shortage of sound vehicles, and they are a ‘used only’ dealership. I’ve not checked auction prices lately to see if they are upward trending, I suspect for anything in good shape they probably are.

[PMP]

19 minutes ago, Chops said:

14 years ago, my '76 Dodge Mirada, which I purchased from a junk yard, finally choked and died beside the road, etiology unknown to this day. I purchased, brand new, a 2007 Hyundai Accent, a car which I dislike intensely, all the more so that it has never stranded me. It has 252,000 miles (408773 km) and refuses to die. Wonder what it is worth now? 

UK with around 1/3 of mileage probably around £700. Even now in the uk 250k miles for a car is unusual, often binned long before. With 250k on it’d  be a hard sell even with encyclopaedic service history. 
There’s still a bit of a glass ceiling at the 100k mileage mark but I think that’s reduced from the stigma it used to have.

 

One thing I find intriguing re the shortage is the number of airfields across the uk with significant amounts of stored ‘current’ vehicles, a typical example above.

[RANGERS]

14 hours ago, RANGERS said:

Amongst all the furore about post-Brexit and pandemic related shortages of just about everything, I took my car in to the main dealer for service the other day and spotted a near identical model on the forecourt priced significantly higher than I’d paid for mine 18months ago.

 

Talking to the sales guy, he reckoned used values are up around 20% on the most popular models compared to a year ago on account of the lack of supply of new cars. Shortage of micro-chips, shortage of delivery drivers, shortage of shipping capacity amongst other things being the cause.

 

Curiosity got the better of me and a popular car buying site confirmed that 18 months and 18000 miles down the line, their bid for my car would be circa £1100 more than I paid for it. As running costs have been minimal, even the service cost was included in the original deal, I could actually make a profit on 18000 miles of motoring!

Took this a stage further today with a call to the dealer, who currently have a new car promo event on, they do it this time every year and are continuing even though they only have 17 cars in stock at the moment, most sales are new build orders which are running at 16-20 weeks at the moment.

 

If I hand my car over now, they’ll pay out the agreed figure less £5k deposit on the new. I’d hand them the car (no big deal, we can get through the winter on one car) and take delivery of the new, which they’d hold until March 1 if by any chance it is ready before then.

 

The bid is better than the car buying site, £2300 more than I paid for it, and the price on the new is discounted by just over £4K, which is only a couple of hundred pounds more than they quoted me in May 2019, and the retail price has increased by more than that since then.

 

Tempting though it is, the actual cost to change is almost £17k, all of which is  essentially depreciation on my current car (most of which the previous owner kindly funded!) and which is roughly what it would cost me over the next three and a bit years to reach where I am now with a new car at just over three years old. As keeping what I have will mean a loss of much, much less, I’m likely to stick with it.

[SWT442]

The price of used cars is what prompted me to get mine repaired. I purchased my run around ('08 Mercedes A180 CDI) a couple of years ago for about half what the going rate for one was, the dual mass flywheel was a little rattly but still had some life in it. Fast forward to the start of this year and it was definitley on it's way out but still driving without issue.

 

Quotes from garages for a new DMF, clutch & slave cylinder were well over £2k, sometimes getting on for £3k! So, I thought screw it, if I'm paying that much to repair it, I'll add another couple of grand to that and get something a bit newer and nicer, plus I wanted an auto. Last time I'd had a look on Autotrader and the like, you could get a decent car that was 10 years old or newer for around £5-6k, primarily looking at a Mercedes C or E classes with a few miles on them. Nope, best I could find was a 2007 Volvo V70 with (I think) over 130,000 miles that was pushing £5k! Reckon it would've been nearly half that a year ago. Even the prices for my car (admittedly without DMF issues) were far and above what I paid for mine.

 

I was very fortunate, though, that the garage that looks after the work vans did me a deal, which did see all the work done for £1,400. Still a hefty chunk to spend on a near 15 year old car but it seemed daft to bin it and pay over the odds for something else. With the parts coming with a 2 year warranty, I'll keep it for at least that long and wait for the used car prices to become a bit more sensible again before I upgrade.

 

Andy.

[298]

4 hours ago, SWT442 said:

Nope, best I could find was a 2007 Volvo V70 with (I think) over 130,000 miles that was pushing £5k! Reckon it would've been nearly half that a year ago. 

 

Was it because it had a full petrol tank?

[jcm@gwr]

I have a similar problem, I've been looking for a replacement van for a while now.

I have a Transit Connect Bi-fuel, which means not only it is ULEZ compliant, but I

don't need to pay to travel through the Congestion Zone (if I need/want to).

Unfortunately, since the announcement of the extended ULEZ, the price of petrol

vans has rocketed, the cheapest I found was a Citroen, MOT fail, with a knocking

engine, for £5k! 

So, like it or not, I have to keep mine going, I replaced the engine a couple of years

ago, but it needs an ECU, which are not available, anywhere. My only option is to

get a Focus ECU, and complete under bonnet loom, then get it re-programmed to

the van, and then a new LPG system fitted, this is on a van with a mileage of 366k!

[45156]

I have a 16 plate SEAT Ibiza - I asked my normal dealer to look out for a similar model in an 67 or an 18 plate, as my car needs about £500 spending on it now to get the brakes fettled, and an intermittent sensor fault rectified.  The other day, I got a call suggesting that I give up my search for now, and instead spend the £500 on getting the existing car put right, as it was now worth about £1000 more than I paid for it 18 months ago.  It is now booked on for the work, as it has only got 42K on the clock, given that it was not used for a while during lockdown - no brainer really in the sircumstances.