Edmunds Report Finds High Prices Aren’t Slowing Consumer Demand for Used Cars
Prices and interest rates are high, but that’s not stopping — or even slowing — consumer demand for used vehicles, according to the latest report from Edmunds.
Edmunds’ Q2 2023 Used Vehicle Report showed a strong market for used sales, powered by years of postponed vehicle purchases, despite continued unfavorable conditions for car shoppers.
“Used-vehicle demand continued to defy the odds in Q2,” Edmunds director of insights Ivan Drury said in a news release. “Shoppers are facing interest rates not seen since the Great Recession and inventory challenges have kept prices historically high, but used purchases are continuing to chug along.”
The high demand, Drury said, is being driven by a large number of consumers who have been “sitting things out” since the beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020 are now “likely being forced back into the market out of sheer necessity.”
Those consumers are back in the market with a vengeance. Edmunds’ data found average days to turn for used vehicles fell to 34 days in Q2 2023, compared to 39 days before the pandemic in Q2 2019.
Analysts said that’s a strong indicator that consumers have made buying a vehicle a high priority regardless of the price and other factors.
They’re acting in part because prices have begun declining from the unprecedented peak of the past year, though they’re still far above pre-pandemic levels.
The average used transaction price for the second quarter of 2023, according to the report, was $29,472 – down 4.6% from the record $30,905 of Q2 2022. But it was still a whopping 46% above the Q2 2018 average $20,153. And the 3.8% quarter-over-quarter rise was more than the typical 2% seasonal increase.