Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Beggs on the Used Car Market, the very latest used car market data provided by Black Book and Ricky Beggs. Well, at least in the southeastern United States the weather treated us a little kinder this past week. For those of you in the Midwest, I can feel for you with the almost constant wave of bitter cold temperatures as I witnessed it first hand in Omaha while presenting some thoughts on the market.

So did the weather continue to affect the used market? As the data was captured and analyzed, the overall market continues to improve and we rose to 36% of all adjustments being increases to the previously published daily values. The last time there was this level of increases was back for the week ending May 17, 2013, near the middle of the second quarter strength in market values. From the increases, it brought the overall average car segment change to -$43, the lowest declining level over the past five weeks. This lower level of change is still greater than year ago levels of -$24 for the cars. Better performing car segments by percentage were the Entry Sporty Cars at -.17% and the Entry Mid-size Cars at -.18%. The greater declining segments by percentage were from two extremes, but at the same -.38%, the Entry Level Cars and the Premium Sporty Cars.  The current winter weather is sure not creating interest in higher end sporty cars and the stable gas prices aren’t supporting fuel efficiency demand. As the cars average change continues to decline to lower amounts, this is the first time over the past seven weeks that the cars change was less than the trucks. Maybe the trucks’ previous strength is ready for a slight correction.

Although the trucks declined slightly more than the previous week at -$49, it was the second lowest level of change over the past five weeks. The Full-size vans and wagons, along with the Full-size SUVs and the Mid- and Full-size Pickups were all on the low end of the percentage depreciation for the week. The largest dollar level declining truck segments were the Mid-size Crossovers and the Compact Crossovers at -$82 and -$75 respectively.

Back near the end of December we anticipated a fairly steady increase in the price of gas at the pump over the first couple of months of 2014. From the week of December 16, 2013 and for the next four weeks, gas increased $.09. The next three weeks we had gas prices change less than a penny. We are at a significantly lower price this year at $3.29 as compared to the $3.54 one year ago. We will be keeping a look out to see what effects, if any this has on both the more efficient models as well as some of the bigger units.

Within the diesel fuel prices there has been an increase of $.08 over the past three weeks, but we are still $.07 less than year ago levels, today at $3.95 a gallon at the pump. 

As 2014 progresses we will be seeing increased volumes of used vehicles that are originated as normal trade-ins, as well as from end of term leases. Black Book will be here reporting the changes in the market as they occur.