LOWER retail demand for vehicles priced over £12,000 saw used car values drop 0.7% last month.
The drop was larger than the seasonal trend where over the last five years, the movement in Black Book Live for January was an average of – 0.4%.
Average downward movements were visible for each mainstream sector, with MPVs and SUVs the worst affected. SUV values edged down by 1% on average, due to supply slightly outweighing demand.
Within the trade sold data analysed by cap hpi, the annual volume of data for SUVs has almost trebled in volume in six years.
Derren Martin, head of UK valuations at cap hpi said: “In 2013, SUVs accounted for 10% of the sold volume and by 2018 it was over 20%. Overall trade volumes received have increased but more so for SUV, with close to 400,000 records scrutinised last year for this sector alone.
“While SUVs usually sell well, certain examples of SUVs struggled to achieve previous cap values in January, so moved down by more than the norm, examples were Audi Q3, BMW X3 and Range Rover Evoque.”
Martin said there is some uncertainty around the economy with still no real clue as to how the run-up to the Brexit deadline in March will pan out or what the picture will be like afterwards.
He added: “It is impossible to predict what might happen to the used vehicle market. On the one hand, an economic downturn could lead to a difficult used car market, but if new car supply were to be affected by exchange rates, leading to price increases, this could push more consumers into the used car arena. Only time will tell.”
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