Searching through a used car lots lately for those hidden gems hasn't been as rewarding as of late. The purchase price on most used cars has been slowly climbing to near that of the price of new cars for sale, drastically cutting into whatever value you might uncover.
It's not news for customers of our used car search engine that prices are up lately, it's been slowly climbing all year. The news shoppers want to know is when are prices going to stop climbing, and when will used car classified prices get better. The answer is not anytime soon.
First the good news, prices at used car lots will likely cap sometime next year. The bad news is that means the worst is still ahead of us and a turn around even further ahead into the future. We probably won't see a real turn around in used car classified prices until after 2014.
Why so late? As with most economic woes as of late, blame the banks. It still feels like yesterday but three years ago when the credit crunch hit us, lease special offers suddenly stopped becoming so special. With the flow of lease cars suddenly turned off, some of the most normally attractive used cars are simply not to be found. Now low mileage 30 mpg cars and near new vehicles are hard to find.
In response, normally less attractive cars are fetching more and buyers are finding fewer options. And while the price of new cars for sale haven't exactly gone down the way many had hoped they would as dealers rushed to fill depleted lots post Japan's earthquake, they have still managed to remain competitive to the used car search engine prices.
So now, until this year and last years lease special offers get turned in to car lots in two or three years prices will remain inflated. On top of that, many more 30 mpg vehicles that would have made their way to dealerships have been scraped or salvaged on account of the East coast hurricane further depleting available used cars.
So what do you do in the meantime? Well spend more time browsing through Lotpro trying to be first to the remaining diamonds in the rough, consider buying a new car, or look into those lease specials for yourself. If you don't put a lot of miles down, it should carry you right into the right time to buy a used car.