April was best month for auction sales in almost 5 years

April was the strongest month for wholesale auction sales since the early days of COVID-19, driven by a surge in dealer sales not seen in over a year-and-a-half, according to the National Auto Auction Association.

In its latest AuctionNet data and analysis, NAAA said there were 652,315 wholesale auction unit sales last month, which beats year-ago figures by 12.6%.

The last time auction sales were that high was July 2020, when about 687,000 units were sold, NAAA said.

They were also up 0.3% from March, when adjusting for selling days, bucking the usual trend of declining sequentially this month.

Dealer sales climbed over 17% year-over-year in April and were the primary driver in the overall uptick, according to NAAA, which said that increase was the largest in over a year-and-a-half.

“Given the outsized jump in new-vehicle sales that occurred in March and April in anticipation of tariff-related increases in new-vehicle prices (the new vehicle seasonally adjusted annual rate averaged 17.56M over the two-month period), consumer trade-ins were largely responsible for last month’s improvement in dealer auction sales,” NAAA vice president Larry Dixon said in the report.

Moving to commercial consignment, 1- to 2-year-old vehicle sales (which is heavily weighted to off-rental, plus an increasing amount of 2-year-old lease returns) jumped more than 30% year-over-year last month.

This drove a 10.8% rise in overall commercial sales, NAAA said. Meantime, as off-lease units decline, so did 3-year-old vehicle sales, which fell 8% year-over-year in April.

There was a 5% decline in sales of 4- to 5-year-old units last month, but a 17.6% spike in sales of vehicles 7 years or older.

NAAA attributes the latter’s growth to an increase in trade-ins and repossessions.

Breaking down April’s activity by segment, wholesale sales for compact and midsize climbed 2.8% on average, ending a string of softer sales. Compact crossovers/SUVs were up 10.9% and luxury cars were up a similar 10.0%.

Wholesale sales for compact luxury crossovers/SUVs (up 26.3%), full-size pickups (up 21.6%) and midsize crossover/SUVs (up 19.8%) surged last month, NAAA data shows.

Midsize luxury crossovers/SUVs also had a nice lift at 14.9%.

Year-to-date, there have been 2.45 million wholesale unit sales, which beats the year-ago period by 8.1%, when adjusting for selling days, NAAA said.

Note: This is part of a monthly series in which Auto Remarketing shares AuctionNet data and commentary provided by the National Auto Auction Association.

As noted by the organization, more than 260 NAAA member auctions power AuctionNet, making it the most comprehensive source of wholesale auto auction sales data in the U.S. Unless otherwise noted, auction sales figures are based on total reporting auctions, the number and composition of which may vary over time.  Data below courtesy of AuctionNet/NAAA.