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I have recently been looking for a used car to commute in. The main priority was that it gave good fuel economy, it was relatively small, preferably fun to drive, and not the kind of vehicle that would depress me every time I got behind the wheel - something with a bit of character.Most importantly, it had to be around £10,000. I'm no badge snob, so I looked at everything from Audi's to VW's, Seat's and Skoda's. The thing that shocked me was the prices. Back in the good old days, your average car would depreciate between 40 and 60% in the first 3 years, so a three to four year old was a relatively good buy. As an example of prices now, I looked at a VW Golf 2.0 GT Tdi - 05/05 plate (so 4.5 years old at time of writing) with 48,000 miles on the clock. Price - £9995. Now, a brand new Golf GT costs £19,815 on the road - so the retail price of the used car still remains at 50% after 4.5 years, when I would have expected to pay that for a three year old car. How has this happened?
UK buyers currently favour smaller, economical cars and the lack of new car business means there are fewer part exchanges and therefore fewer used cars. Demand outstrips supply, and despite dealers and auction houses preaching that there has never been a better time to buy a used car, they are in fact expensive. A friend of mine has just sold a 7 year old Nissan Micra for just under £2000 pounds, a car that only a few years ago I would have valued at around £750 in the trade. On some of the forecourts I visited, salesmen were clearly not interested in discussing price or trying to find cars that were out of stock - a clear sign that it's a seller's market for used cars. This is particularly true of the more sought after "prestige" and European marques. 9-12 months ago, experts were predicting the largest drops in vehicle values in history - to some extent they were right, but the market has managed to restore them.
So, if you've got a car to sell and you don't need to replace it, now is the time to do it. There has never been a better time to sell your car!
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