With dealership competition as fierce as ever and consumers further recognizing the value of used vehicles, vAuto wants to be sure its tools are as sharp as possible. On Wednesday, the company expanded its proprietary suite of market data to all Stockwave users.

The expansion included the introduction of vAuto’s Live Market View and Autotrader’s Scarcity Index.

Stockwave is a vAuto solution that can help dealers effectively and efficiently find and purchase vehicles from top wholesale sources all through a single platform. Through this expansion, Stockwave users — both independent and franchised dealerships — will gain access to valuable market data from vAuto and Autotrader to help them make more confident and informed used-vehicle purchase decisions. 

While rising affordability concerns are causing new-vehicle sales volume to taper, vAuto insisted the used-vehicle market continues to hold strong. In fact, vAuto acknowledged dealerships may need to be more concerned about supply than demand.

To date, wholesale market growth and supply has largely been driven by off-lease vehicles. However, Cox Automotive calculations suggest off-lease volume will peak in 2019, indicating supply moving forward could become a major headwind for the used-vehicle market rather than demand itself.

Both independent and franchised dealers are starting to take notice, with approximately 33% of all dealers saying limited inventory is holding back their dealership, according to the Cox Automotive Dealer Sentiment Index for the second quarter of 2019. That’s an increase of 4 percentage points from last quarter.

“With the number of off-lease units at a peak and fewer consumers as a whole trading in their vehicles, the data and insights dealers have at their fingertips are more important than ever to ensure they are buying and selling the right inventory at the right time for the right price,” said Patrick Janes, business development director for Stockwave at vAuto.

“As supply changes, so must dealer inventory strategies. By introducing Stockwave Market Data, both independent and franchise dealers will be better equipped with information to acquire the inventory they need and capitalize on rising demand,” Janes continued.

Previously only available to Stockwave dealers with vAuto Provision, all standalone Stockwave dealerships will now also have open access to the following four key metrics right in the platform:

1. Autotrader Scarcity Index: Gives dealers an understanding of online search demand for a car relative to the number available in a given market area.

2. vAuto rBook Market Days Supply: Lets dealers know at a glance whether a vehicle is likely to sell fast, given competing cars in the market and recent sales. 

3. vAuto rBook Adjusted Market Average Price: Uses proprietary technology to indicate what a vehicle’s real market average pricing is with inventory mileage from competitors factored in.

4. vAuto rBook Market Average Odometer: Specifies the average mileage of retail vehicles in a dealer’s given market.

“Having the Scarcity Index and Market Days Supply inside Stockwave will help my team save hours of scanning through search results to find the right cars,” said Craig White, pre-owned director at Ourisman Lexus of Rockville.

“What we used to track through static spreadsheets is now all in one dashboard and available at a quick glance, enabling my team to make split-second decisions on vehicles that weren’t even on our original buy list. We are now nimbler, able to monitor multiple auctions at once and effectively growing our used-vehicle volume to meet rising demand,” White went on to say.

Auto Remarketing recently hosted Janes as a part of a free webinar to share strategies on improving inventory management. That webinar is available here.

For more information on Stockwave, visit www.vauto.com/stockwavedata.