Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Beggs on the Used Car Market, with the latest vehicle valuation data from Ricky Beggs and Black Book. We trust you have had a good week on the retail lots, in the auction lanes and airwaves and within the finance offices.

For those of you who have commented over the past several weeks that you expect the market to soften, you will have to wait at least one more week to see that different trend appear. The majority of the comments passed along by the Black Book survey personnel indicated brisk activity and sales with prices holding firm or even getting stronger. There were multiple mentions of interest in the two to four year old models.

All of those comments, and the actual data brought us another strong level of increasing prices. Three weeks ago we set a new high water market of 67% of all adjustments being increases. Then there was a week of 71% going up and now a third consecutive week of a growing level of changes being increases, now at 77% this past week.

All of these increases enabled twenty of the twenty-four total segments to finish in positive levels from the previous week. For the first time since well before the first of the year the Luxury Level Cars and the Near Luxury Level Cars had positive change levels, with the overall car segment change coming in at +$21.

The trucks were positive for the week at +$26 with twelve of the fourteen segments on the plus side. The Compact Crossovers continue to lead the pack in consecutive weekly positive changes. The past two weeks the segment with the highest dollar increase was the truck based Compact SUVs.

It has been exciting to see the strength in the market continue for the past five to six weeks, and especially if you are on the selling side.

The thing to remember is the market is almost always changing. We hope to see you back on the lanes this week to see what the change levels will actually be. Have a great week!