The analytical company Cox Automotive tracked the sales history of more than six million cars over a year at American auctions and found that used car prices rose by 1.7% in each of the last three weeks. As a result, on average, a used car is now almost 30% more expensive than exactly a year ago – just with the introduction of quarantine around the world due to the coronavirus infection.
As an example, the Kia Soul with and without mileage is given. Thus, a new 2021 Kia Soul LX costs $17,724 in the US now. At the same time, a used 2020 Kia Soul LX in the same color and with identical options was sold at the Manheim Auctions auction for $18,500 – that is the price the buyer paid for a one-year-old car with a mileage of 5,000 miles (8,000 km). However, that's not all. The buyer also had to pay an auction fee of $500, plus another $200 for post-sale inspections, delivery, and other expenses. In total, the price difference is $1,500–2,000! And, as local media write, this is not the only example – there are quite a lot of such cases in America now.
The reason for this trend is that there is a high demand for cars (both new and used) in general, while the production of new cars has sharply declined in recent months due to the lack of microchips (almost all manufacturers faced this problem – Nissan, Honda, Ford, BMW, General Motors, etc.). In other words, the market cannot satisfy the demands of buyers, that is, demand exceeds supply.
