[2] It was another solid month for the used-car market. Sales didn’t quite reach the 3 million mark in November, but they still eclipsed year-ago levels by almost 15 percent and continued a blisteringly hot year.
According to CNW Research, there were 2.98 million used vehicles sold last month, which marked a 14.6-percent year-over-year increase.
Year-to-date, there have been 37.37 million used sales, compared to 35.65 million sold through 11 months of 2011, CNW said. Already, the 37 million-plus units sold through November beats full-year figures from 2008, 2009 and 2010, according to historical data from CNW.
Breaking it down by seller type, franchised dealers saw their used market share decrease about 2 percentage points from October, but they still boosted their used sales by more than 28 percent, moving 1.09 million units.
Likewise, independents saw about a 1-percent dip in their market share from October, but sales climbed from 818,126 units in November 2011 to 1.09 million used sales this time around.
On the other hand, the market share for private-party sales climbed more than 2 percentage points from October, but year-over-year unit sales figures were down significantly. There were 787,723 private- party sales last month, compared to 920,887 sales in November 2011.
In the firm’s monthly projections for the used-car market released last week [3], CNW president Art Spinella explained why casual sales were “taking it on the chin” in November and detailed his thoughts on the year-over-year gains for independents and franchised shops.
“Casual sales are suffering because dealers are becoming increasingly aggressive in selling used cars and are having vehicles shipped into the Northeast from as far away as California to meet the demand,” Spinella said.
“Second, many individuals who would sell their cars privately in the Northeast simply lost those cars to Superstorm Sandy and have nothing to sell or had other issues to contend with,” he continued.
“Third, dealers are offering some pretty good prices across the country for solid used vehicles as trade-ins to meet the demand.”