Based on projections for used-car supply provided to Auto Remarketing by NADA Used Car Guide, there will likely be an 18-percent rise next year in the number of off-lease units within the pool of used vehicles up to 8 years in age.

In its used supply forecast, broken up by registration type, NADA is predicting just under 1.9 0 million off-lease units, up from 1.61 million in 2013 and 1.41 million in 2012. This would mark the second straight year of double-digit-percentage gains in off-lease volume after a string of declines, according to the NADA data.

Over at Edmunds.com, the site is projecting that franchised dealers will likely be privy to about 550,000 additional used vehicles via trade-ins and grounded lease maturities.

When asked for particular vehicle types that dealers should pay attention to in considering in the overall supply picture, a couple segments that Edmunds’ Joe Spina said he has watched closely in recent years are the compact and subcompact cars.

“There has been leasing (penetration) in those segments like we’ve never seen before,” said Spina, the company’s director of used-car analysis.  

And it’s not just the leasing penetration that has shot up significantly for these segments, he added.  Going back to the 2008 through 2010 time frame, sales have been strong for compacts and subcompacts and the original MSRPs were at “pretty high” levels as well, Spina said.

Couple that with consumers being well-adjusted to fuel costs and it could lead to lower prices for these cars.

“Right now consumers are getting used to these higher gas prices. We don’t see knee-jerk reaction to pricing with those more fuel-efficient cars. And there is going to be a lot of those cars coming back off lease and even people trading them in to the overall used inventories,” he emphasized.

“I think that there’s going to be some downward pressure on prices in those segments.”

As for recent trends in the fuel-efficient car segment, Ricky Beggs touched on this in his latest video report.

With gas prices dropping through most of the fall, the fuel-efficient segments, such as entry-level cars, have seen larger price declines — but that wasn’t the case this past week.

Although gas prices are still low, during the two weeks prior to Thanksgiving national average gas price increased a total of $0.09, Beggs explained.

“It is possible that the previous two weeks of increases pushed a little more interest into the smaller, more fuel-efficient cars and thus slightly better bidding,” he noted in the latest “Beggs on the Used Car Market” video report.

Overall, Beggs reported that the average car segment change of -$34 was the lowest weekly average change seen since the week ending June 7. The car segments with the lowest rate of depreciation were the entry-level cars and luxury level cars, with only a $5 drop each.

In November, however, the entry-level cars led the pack — perhaps a result of lower gas rates pushing prices down for fuel-efficient segments. The entry-level cars saw a decline of 3.7 percent in November. The average wholesale price for this segment finished at $7,631, a 16.6-percent softening from same time year ago ($9,145).

Editor's Note: Staff Writer Sarah Rubenoff contributed to this story.