Welcome to this week's edition of Black Book Market Insights, with in-depth analysis of used car and truck valuation trends and insights straight from the auction lanes. Click here to download the full report.
 
In this week's report, the Black Book editorial team takes a close look at this past week's valuation trends. As we see the beginning of April finding the industry, there are some surprising segments finding strength this Spring. Namely, Black Book has identified stronger-than-normal seasonal patterns this year with the Entry Mid-Size Cars, Upper Mid-Size Cars and the Compact SUV trucks segments. Conversely, the Black Book editors have not seen the usual strength in typical tax-season segments such as Entry-Level Cars and Compact Cars.
 
Black Book believes we may be nearing the latter part of tax season, especially from sentiment being reported straight from the lanes, where dealers are pointing out that the market overall has been slowing as of late. Much of this may be in part to the early start of the tax season inventory build, which was observed as early as late November, 2014.
 
“Seasonality patterns are looking different this spring as the interest from buyers kept the used vehicle market more level from the latter part of 2014 into the first quarter of early 2015,” according to Anil Goyal, Vice President of Automotive Valuation and Analytics.
 
Typically, we see a consistent seasonality lift in values in March, especially in the car segments. In 2014, the seasonal uptick was delayed due to the longer winter weather. However, 2015 patterns do not show the strong lift in March.
 
The truck segments did not show a steeper decline in the latter part of 2014 and both car and truck values held up high in the Nov-Dec of 2014. This early buying took the steam out of the usual seasonality resulting in more stable prices over several months.
 
Overall, the volume-weighted car values dropped by 0.06% past week.
Overall, the volume-weighted truck value dropped by 0.05% past week.
We did not see the typical seasonal spring time, tax season strong lift this season on Entry Level Car and Compact Car segments.
Entry Mid-Size Car, Upper Mid-Size Car and Compact SUV segment saw stronger values last week with good positive gains at +0.22%, +0.34% and +0.75%, respectively
Full Size Cargo Vans continue to attract more interest, a good sign of improving service sector economy.
 
Another Stable Week for Fuel Prices
Gas prices remained stable at $2.45 last week
Gas price prediction remains below the $2.60 high for 2015
Diesel dropped by 46 cents to $2.86
 
Click here to download the full report.