Here is the latest used car market report from Black Book and Ricky Beggs, Editorial Director. Thanks for taking the time to tune into this video market blog from Black Book. While out in the field for a couple of days this past week, the number of comments I received from people who regularly watch this video was overwhelming. We’ll continue to attempt to provide you with our insight, all in hopes of supporting your businesses.

As the editors and Black Book survey personnel attended the auctions across the country last week the comments regarding no sales and slightly softer values stood out. But the one comment I thought was a more interesting description of the market was “there was little excitement”. This is probably not indicative of the whole market, but is something we likely would only see during this time of the year as we head into the final two months of the year.

As we looked over the numbers from the past week the change within the car segments finished with the same average segment change as the prior week at -$69 and -.44%. Four of the car segments had greater declining amounts week over week led by the Full-size Cars at -$64 as compared to -$17 the prior week. On the improving side the Premium Sporty Cars at -$88 this past week was better than the prior week at -$131. Even with gas prices continuing to fall, the two segments with the smallest declines are from more fuel efficient models and segments, the Entry Mid-size Cars at -$18 and the Compact Cars at -$21.

As we turned our attention to the truck segments the overall change of -$59 was a slight increase in the level of decline from the -$50 from the prior week, but both of the previous two weeks are still less than the year ago level of -$70. All three pickup truck segments had the lowest overall change during this past week at -$21, -$16 and -$28 for the Full-size, Mid-size and Compact Pickups respectively. The most consistent changing truck segment over the past two weeks during November was the Compact Crossovers at -$57 and -$54 respectively.

An interesting comparison is to look at the average car and truck segment overall two week total percentage change. The two week car change of -.88% total is a very reasonable change level for this time of the year. The Entry Level Cars at a two week total of -1.73% is a total change of -$119, while the Prestige Luxury Cars to the other extreme of value was a slightly lower -1.50%, but a larger -$414 two week decline.

The two week pattern for the trucks has the Full-size Passenger Vans at -1.27%, followed by the Mid-size SUVs at -1.06% with the larger dollar change at -$199 for the Full-size Crossovers.

So what do these numbers tell us? The market is moving but not at surprisingly strong levels for the time of the year. The necessary adjustments are a reflection of supply and demand and the lower level of interest to fill the empty holes in inventory from the tens of thousands of used car operations across the country.