The battle between supply and demand is nothing new to dealers — and as we head further into the forecasted growth in used-vehicle supply, wholesale price softening is to be expected.

The latter is the message from ADESA Analytical Services’ executive vice president and chief economist Tom Kontos in the December edition of Kontos Kommentary, where he summed up the year quite succinctly and set the scene for 2016.

“2015 was largely a year when strong retail used vehicle and CPO demand, benign new-vehicle incentive activity, and the embrace of upstream as well as traditional auction processes among remarketers diluted the usual negative impact of growing supply on wholesale values,” Kontos said in the report.

“Further masking that impact was the displacement of off-rental program vehicle volume that appeared in the first half of the year rather than the last quarter of 2014,” he added. “These high-dollar, late-model units biased average wholesale prices upward for much of the year.”

Unfortunately, that dilution of wholesale values started to clear up by the end of the year, most notably in December, where Kontos says prices fell by upwards of 1 percent on both a month-over-month and year-over-year basis for various segments.

Let’s break it down. Wholesale used-vehicle prices in December averaged in at $9,763, a decrease of 1.2 percent month-over-month and down 1.0 percent relative to December 2014.

The only vehicle segment that showed any significant monthly increase was the minivan segment, while truck values, in general, declined less than cars and crossovers.

Looking at the various types of sellers, wholesale prices for vehicles remarketed by manufacturers were up 1.6 percent month-over-month but down 3.5 percent year-over-year. For fleet/lease consignors, both metrics were down 0.1 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively.

Within the fleet/lease consignment category, off-rental risk units showed small month-over-month and year-over-year price increases.

Three-year-old vehicles, however, did not, Kontos said. These vehicles — which he said are a “proxy for off-lease vehicles” — showed significant declines in both pricing metrics.

Dealer consignment saw a 2-percent decrease in December, compared to November, and a 1.2-percent decreased compared to December 2014.

To check out Kontos’ full breakdown of wholesale used-vehicle prices by vehicle model class, click here.