Wholesale price declines are slowing down, according to this week’s edition of the "Beggs on the Used Car Market" video report.

The managing editor of Black Book started his report by noting that even though this time of year usually brings higher depreciation levels than the rest of the year, “as we look at the overall average segment change for the cars and trucks, this traditional pattern has not yet begun to happen.

"As a matter of fact, the movement is actually going in the other direction over the past four weeks,” Ricky Beggs shared.

This past week,  the overall average wholesale price decline came in at  $64, considerably less than the two previous weeks.

“Two and three weeks ago, we had some pretty strong declining levels of change within the premium sporty cars and the prestige luxury level cars, leading to an overall car segment change level of $87 two weeks ago and $94 three weeks ago,” Beggs explained.

Contributing to the slowing decline this past week was the fact that the change in prices for the premium sporty car and the prestige luxury car segments was not as steep; “their level of change was much better at $100 and $91, respectively, this past week,” Beggs noted.

And which car segment saw the smallest price slide?

For the third consecutive week, the entry-level cars, which fell by only $4, had the best retention of all the car segments, Beggs reported.

On the other hand, the entry midsize cars had the largest depreciation at $107 and also the largest percentage decline at 1.35 percent.

And even though fuel prices remain high, retention in the truck segments was stronger than retention on the car side, which "has been the case for the past 10 weeks," Beggs pointed out.

In fact, the overall segment only saw a decline of  $15 or 0.11 percent, which “is the best we have seen over the last 20 weeks, since the week ending May 11,” he stressed.

As for positive changes, this past week saw rises in four segments, including all three pickup segments from full-size to compacts and also the compact crossovers.

“The variance within the truck segments this past week was as consistent as I can recently remember, with no segment standing out of line from the overall group,” Beggs concluded.
 

Beggs’ video can be viewed below.