Hello and welcome to this week’s Used Car Market Report, with data and insights from Black Book. Thank you for tuning in and your interest in Black Book’s insight into the market for the past week. And what a week it has been with our editors tracking and reporting the used market, working on some residual forecasting for the lease and risk markets and also getting specific details into a couple of totally new products for the US market. A relatively new segment, with a tremendous increase in the number of players, is the Sub-Compact Crossover segment. The Chevy Trax now joins the Nissan Juke, Buick Encore, and Mitsubishi Outlander Sport in this segment. Already announced and soon to be available are the Honda HR-V, Fiat 500X, and Jeep Renegade, and I am sure there will be more.

Another segment with new entries includes the small vans. Ford with the Transit Connect started this movement and then came the Nissan NV200. Now we have the Chevrolet City Express. Several of our editors are also getting an introduction this week to the Promaster City.

Notice that both of these just mentioned growing segments are made up of smaller physical footprints, with a focus on fuel efficiency, at a time when gas prices are the lowest in over four years. This week gas prices took a temporary stop at $2.68 per gallon, $.59 below year ago levels and a $.10 drop from the prior week. Even diesel took a $.07 plunge this past week to $3.54 per gallon.

As we received the data and individual summary reports from the Black Book survey personnel, the analysis confirmed the various comments into the actual auction activity. The market is not acting in typical December fashion. Sellers are more willing to move the product and buyers are not just buying for today’s end of the year retail push, but aggressively going after inventory that will meet the needs of the tax refund buyers of February, March and April.

As we looked at the survey personnel reports, I cannot remember a week where there was a single comment mentioned as many times. It is all about trucks and 4X4 SUVs. If I was a seller and needed to move inventory I would hope to have a stronger mix of those type units. The activity and prices of these was the main focus of the reports from the southwest, western coast, northwest, midwest and southeast. About the only area of the country not referencing this was the northeastern part of the country. Maybe we’ll hear from this area this week.

Even with all of the mention of trucks, the cars at a -$37 average segment change this past week, was the lowest weekly change within the cars since the week ending May 2, 2014. The three segments with the lowest declines, the Entry Level Cars, the Compact Cars and the Entry Mid-size Cars, were all at -$15 or less. These segments have also been the better performing segments consistently over the past few years during the first quarter of the year. We see this as another sign of the tax season pulling ahead.

The trucks, at -$26 for the week, continue to have several segments increasing in value each week. Both of the full-size vans, along with the Compact Pickups and the Compact SUVs increased, while the Full-size Pickups at -$5, the Full-size SUVs at -$9 and the Mid-size SUVs at -$5, were reflective of the comments coming from the lanes as to the vehicles showing the most interest.

So as you see, the finished adjustments confirm that it is an unusual market for the early part of December. We still have one more full week of auction activity before the holiday weeks. We’ll be back on the lanes gathering the data and insight in order to report the most current market values. Have a great week!