CARY, N.C. -

Though still softer year-to-date, the certified pre-owned vehicle market has started the summer with two consecutive months of year-over-year gains, according to data shared Monday by Cox Automotive.

And the current forecast for the full-year tally, while not expected to be another all-time high, may still be in the same neighborhood as the record stretch in the 2010s.

More specifically, there were 254,982 CPO sales last month, up 8% from the 236,579 certified sales in July 2019, a Cox Automotive analysis of Motor Intelligence data shows.  

In June, there were 261,586 CPO sales, up from 240,844 a year earlier, according to that same analysis.

May’s 237,495 certified sales were off from 251,863 CPO sales in May 2019.

Despite a record start to the year in January and February (and the gains in June and July), the “huge decreases” in March and April have put year-to-date certified sales 9% behind the 2019 pace, Cox said in the report.

Currently, the company is projecting 2.5 million certified sales for 2020, compared to the 2.8 million CPO sales in 2019, which was the ninth consecutive year of record-high certified sales.

While it could change, analysts said that projection is much stronger than the 2.0 million CPO sales Cox Automotive was projecting a couple of months back in its 2020 Market Insights & Outlook

It’s also comparable to some of the annual CPO sales levels reached during the nine-year record run. For instance, both 2017 and 2016 — which were record years — had certified sales in the neighborhood of 2.64 million, according to Autodata Corp. data previously reported on by Auto Remarketing. There were 2.55 million in 2015 and 2.34 million sales in 2014, which again were both record years at the time, according to our previous reporting on Autodata info.