Despite what some industry folks predicted early on in the pandemic, the coronavirus did not crash the car market. In fact, due to inventory shortages and many buyers wanting their own transportation aside from ride-hailing and public transit, the car market was booming in certain areas. Used cars especially were affected, and according to a recent study by iSeeCars.com, buyers paid an average of 9.5 percent more in October compared with last year.
The used car market is still going strong, according to some recent data from iSeeCars.com buyers saw some substantial increases for certain used models in October versus last year. The methodology for this data is as follows –
iSeeCars.com analyzed over 1.2 million used car sales from model years 2015 to 2019 in October 2020, and over 1.3 million used car sales from model years 2014 to 2018 in October 2019. The average listing prices of each car model were compared between the two time periods, and the differences were expressed as both a percentage difference from the 2019 price as well as a dollar difference. Heavy-duty vehicles and low-volume vehicles were excluded from further analysis.
The fact that pickup trunks dominated the list comes as no surprise, as many dealers saw shortages in new pickups because of factory closures due to COVID-19. However, the BMW 5 Series, surprisingly, takes the No. 1 spot. This is odd, considering that demand for sedans has been in decline for a while.
Another interesting development with this data is that convertible prices jumped up by 27.2 percent compared to last year. So if you are looking for a deal on a used Miata it may be best to wait until after the holidays. Furthermore, two-door models have also seen a big increase in price.
iSeeCars executive analyst Karl Brauer explains –
Demand for sports cars outpaces what is available in the used car marketplace, and dealers don’t have to be competitive with pricing because buyers of these kinds of cars may not be bargain-conscious.
On the bright side, some used models saw a decrease in price compared with October of 2019.
Within this grouping, the key-value seems to be the Chrysler Pacifica for folks shopping for a family car, because if you need to haul kiddos around you should just buy the damn minivan.
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