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TradePending 100: How We've Seen Vehicles Appreciate the Last 18 Months

Matthew Davis

Grease Monkey
Mar 24, 2020
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Over the last 18 months, supply and demand across all industries has been greatly influenced by stimulus checks, labor shortages, and other economic instabilities, resulting in an unpredictable and sporadic market. One anomaly, however, is the recent shift in automotive values.

Cars are now appreciating in value, something we have never seen before, and may never see again. This new structure in the market has sent automotive dealers scrambling to find new inventory from manufacturers, wholesalers and the everyday consumer. Manufacturers, however, are little help at this time. Auction and wholesale prices are through the roof. Dealers now look to the trade-in market, where the increasing values of used vehicles incentivize car owners to sell.

At TradePending, we track retail list prices across 25,000 franchise dealer websites every single day. This data forms the backbone of our products. This is also how we’re able to adjust our trade-in values to match this insane market, where many other trade-in tools struggle.

We typically don’t share our data, as we’re not in the business of marketing and selling data, but the data below is too fascinating to keep to ourselves.

The TradePending 100, which compiles data for the top 100 most-sold used vehicles, shows that used vehicle values increased an average of 12.9% over the past year and a half.

Top 10 Winners

The TradePending TP100's Top 10 Winners


The top 10 highest appreciating used vehicles since January 2020 are mostly trucks, claiming six of the top 10 and all of the top 5. The 2018 Ford F-150 XLT claims the #1 spot, seeing a 30.4% increase in value over the last 18 months.

Bottom 5

TradePending 100 Bottom 5


It might not surprise you that the bottom 5 vehicles in terms of value growth are German luxury vehicles. These cars are usually the quickest depreciating because of expensive repair costs and frequent expensive maintenance. Even still, in each graph you can see a value comeback as used inventory dries up.

Top 5 Winners by Vehicle Class

Across trucks, sedans, and SUVs, the top 5 performing cars in each respective class appreciated an average of 23%. Luxury cars, however, only had a maximum appreciation of 5.74%.

TradePending 100 top 5 vehicle class appreciation

You can read the rest of the post here.
 
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Reactions: Jeff Kershner
Interesting to see all Domestic Trucks in the top 5, though I'm surprised to see Toyota trucks not on the list. Sitting beside a Toyota dealer (part of the group,) I know for a fact new ones are going for sticker or above and pre-owned are a s much as new. And that's if you can even get one. Sucks for BMW at the moment.

Seems as if everything is turning upside down.
 
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Reactions: Matthew Davis