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Pace Of Car Price Declines Picks Up; Trucks Show Opposite Pricing Momentum

Published: September 25, 2012
Some interesting pricing patterns have developed in the used-car industry since April as the pace of price declines among car segments has continuously picked up. So far in September, used-car prices have dropped –2.0%, compared to April when prices slid just –0.2%. Trucks on the other hand have shown the opposite trend since July, as price declines have eased from –1.8% in July to –1.1% in September.
Ricky Beggs, senior analyst at Black Book, reports on these segment price trends in his weekly analysis. Stability across truck segments continued this past week with 3 segments increasing in price for the week and another 5 segments that depreciated by less than -0.2% or less. Mid-size PickupsFull-size Pickups and Compact Crossovers all showed price increases.
Here is a grid breakdown of the monthly price changes between used cars and trucks since April:
Month Cars Price % Change Trucks Price % Change
September -2.0% -1.1%
August -1.7% -1.5%
July -1.5% -1.8%
June -1.1% -1.7%
May -0.8% -0.6%
April -0.2% -0.4%
“Our outlook for the next couple of weeks is an active market with a similar number of changes compared to this past week,” said Ricky Beggs, senior analyst at Black Book. “The trending should again see larger declines with the more luxury-oriented models. We are also watching the late-model vehicles as the lack of interest in wholesale for these could represent some relatively large negative pricing adjustments.”

About Ricky Beggs and Black Book
  • Ricky Beggs is the VP, Managing Editor at Black Book – National Auto Research, a division of Hearst Business Media.
  • He has more than three decades worth of experience analyzing vehicle values for the industry.
  • Frequently provides commentary to the auto industry on used-car and specialty vehicle trends, as well as the latest valuation data.

Follow Ricky on Twitter @BeggsBlackBook (https://twitter.com/beggsblackbook) and on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/blackbookUSA. Click here to view Ricky’s weekly video series offering insight into the auto market http://ow.ly/aHFD6.


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