Car Prices... what the...

gord115

My Golf  R was two years old when I bought it 4 years ago. It cost me £21k.

Now a two year old Golf R is around £29000.

So if I were to buy a two year old one now, even though I have been offered £18k part ex, it would still cost me £11K to change.

A similar change a couple of years ago would have cost me thousands less.

Unless your downsizing or buying new and willing to wait,I would wait for prices to return to normal.

CinderKona

Oh dear.
My ever reliable 8 year old Golf was taken out by a careless HGV last week who said I was in his blind spot. No fault for me and full pay-out but now due to high used car prices its the worst time to buy. I'd just also spent £500 on new brakes and rear shocks.

sevenhills

AdrianC said:

To where? Which RHD countries were you thinking of?

Don't forget import duty and VAT, and the costs of registering the car in the UK - IVA or CoC.

You would be rather restricted when it came to new vehicles, but you can go on eBay and buy a used left-hand drive vehicle.

Not sure how much the saving would be, but I think 90%+ would rule out buying a left-hand drive in this country.

molerat

Car prices are rising week on week.  To buy my car now I would have to pay £3K more than I paid for it 20 mths ago as a 2 week old pre reg with 10 miles from the same dealership - last month it was only +£2K

Ibrahim5

Car prices aren't rising on webuyanycar.com. Just been offered lowest ever for mine 

gord115

Ibrahim5 said:

Car prices aren't rising on webuyanycar.com. Just been offered lowest ever for mine 

WBAC are offering £2700 more for mine than they did a Xmas. And it now has extra mileage!!

photome

Ibrahim5 said:

Car prices aren't rising on webuyanycar.com. Just been offered lowest ever for mine 

mine is..£9800, a few weeks ago, £10700 yesterday

Ibrahim5

Mine has slumped from £555 at christmas to £245. It's insulting.

MovingForwards

Got £150 for scrapping my old car and got my replacement car from a dealer, therefore overpaid a bit.

Grumpy_chap

I wonder whether anyone can explain something for me on this?

There is clear indication that used car prices are currently strong.  This is a fundamental outcome of supply and demand.

The supply (or otherwise) of used cars cascades down from the supply of new cars, which there are reported constraints arising from component availability and labour availability impacted because of COVID.  Low supply of news cars.  That joins in a a perfect storm with Osborne Effect because of the promises of great advances in EV plus economic uncertainty so the big fleets are delaying replacements in some cases.  

I understand that immediately after the first lockdown there was a spike in demand as people wished to use a car where they may have used public transport but concerned about social distancing and such like on trains / buses.  I would assume that demand is past.

There is also a localised demand in some areas to avoid ULEZ charges.

However, there must be a massive number of people that simply do not need a car in anything like the way they previously did because of WFH.  So this must result in a reduction of demand for cars that I would expect to far outweigh the public transport and ULEZ demand drivers.

So, the thing I'd like explained is where is the high demand for cars, that creates the demand side of the supply-demand equation resulting in the strong used car values?