Second Hand car market dead????

techie

Is the second hand car market dead ?? I know a few people who are trying to selling decent cars for good money and they are getting no calls, they have them advertised on adverts, carzone, buyandsell etc and still nothing??

Any thoughts?

Mitch Connor

i don't think it is dead, but has become a victim of its own success in a way. Sites like carzone offer people a wide, wide choice of cars - so they can afford to be more picky - they aren't limited to just what they see on they way to work or around the town, they have the stock of a country to look at now.

Guy:Incognito

Carzone is showing 56,000 cars for sale at the minute. I think its a case of there being so much choice available.

omega man

Everyone wants a 07 car at the moment, ssia's and all that.

smash

SSIA season.... all new car sales. Plus the finance offers like the Opel 50/50 - might slow down used car sales for a while.

fits

Well my SSIA wants a used car
Feel like I've examined every car in my budget three times over at this stage.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

The market is swamped with Used cars at the moment. garages around here reduced Used Car prices by an average of €1000 only this week in a effort to shift some stock. Everyone is buying new at the moment.

whippet

I have my wife's motor on sale for over a month now and not one phone call of note. I am after dropping the price and now it is very competitive but yet no takers!!

I need rid of it quick before the new motor arrives!!

Mailman

30,000 of them are probably in the greater Dublin area.
Think of the value of land sitting under unsold cars in Dublin at the moment.

I welcome the glut of good old cars.
The quality of secondhand car has certainly improved. Older cars are no longer quite as tired as the roads are much better nowadays.

Marcus.Aurelius

why are second hand car prices so high if demand has dropped?

ToxicPaddy

I think its just that the car market is flooded at the moment, I know of one dealership down the country that had over 200 used cars on the lot.. They had to lease a yard nearby just to store half of em..

In the end the shipped anything over 3 years old off to an auction just to get rid of em.. Everyone wants a new car, simple as that..

But there are still a lot of savvy buyers out there who will quite happily let someone take the hit of a new car and the scoop up a great spec second hand one..

Add to the fact of carzone etc, the amount of second hand cars being shipped in from the UK and Japan, you can see why demand far exceeds supply..

Tox

Mitch Connor

maoleary wrote:

why are second hand car prices so high if demand has dropped?

because people want to see a return on their investment, and do not want to drop the price, at least not yet.

While prices should drop as supply out weighs demand, private sellers do not affect themselves with market forces as much as a company would. When they sell, they will pitch their car at the same price as everyone else, unless the really do need a quick sale. This means prices will remain stable.

Marcus.Aurelius

Tauren wrote:

because people want to see a return on their investment, and do not want to drop the price, at least not yet.

While prices should drop as supply out weighs demand, private sellers do not affect themselves with market forces as much as a company would. When they sell, they will pitch their car at the same price as everyone else, unless the really do need a quick sale. This means prices will remain stable.

Good point. I see a lexus ls400 1992 costs 4000 with a dealer and 3000 privately. Would be nice if there were more private ads like buy and sell going

smash

maoleary wrote:

why are second hand car prices so high if demand has dropped?

do you think a dealer buys a car for 5k and sells it for 15..... they buy for near to market value and usually have it on the lot for a while... they have to make some money. A car's value is a car's value!

If you have a car worth 23k and the outstanding finance is 20k, you're not gonna sell it for 17k so you can be the cheapest, that's just dumb! The car is selling for 23k, you need 20 min to cover the costs.

Gatster

I think it will pick up over the summer. SSIA's are a big deal that will effect both the new and used markets - not everyone has been putting the max into their SSIA's so it's not logical to think that everyone has new-car money suddenly available to them (although max SSIA+finance = €30k+ motor).

As with most things, it's a waiting game, although I always think if you have a mint car at a good price you should be able to shift it for near the money you want if you are patient.

dil999

steve06 wrote:

do you think a dealer buys a car for 5k and sells it for 15..... they buy for near to market value and usually have it on the lot for a while... they have to make some money. A car's value is a car's value!

If you have a car worth 23k and the outstanding finance is 20k, you're not gonna sell it for 17k so you can be the cheapest, that's just dumb! The car is selling for 23k, you need 20 min to cover the costs.

Then for every day the car is sitting in the lot its costing the garage owner money. its costing him space, and its costing him interest. And the price that people are willing to pay goes down by the day. If the car doesn't sell, he'll drop the price.

Price is defined as the meeting of what the seller will sell for and the buyer will buy for. Anything else is just an aspiration.

Marcus.Aurelius

Precisely my point. What he bought it for is irrelevant. The cost of the car will be the asking price the punters are willing to pay. Judging by the prices currently, plenty of people are buying second hand and getting fleeced.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

maoleary wrote:

why are second hand car prices so high if demand has dropped?

They're not! I've seen prices at the dealerships around here fall significanly over the past month. Maybe private sellers haven't kepy pace.

shayclarke

Took me 3 months to sell an 02 Focus. At the end I had to reduce price to almost lowest on carzone site to get any calls.

Biro

A big problem is that every second flute is off to England now to buy cheap and park on the side of the road here to make a profit. They're single handedly flooding the market.

Marcus.Aurelius

Biro wrote:

A big problem is that every second flute is off to England now to buy cheap and park on the side of the road here to make a profit. They're single handedly flooding the market.

Hell of a lotta problems with English cars, their local authorites still spread salt instead of grit, wears the crap out of the car underside. Wouldn't touch one myself.

Gatster

Hell of a lotta problems with English cars, their local authorites still spread salt instead of grit, wears the crap out of the car underside. Wouldn't touch one myself.

Are you actually serious? It's not the 70's you know, they don't make 'em like they used to :rolleyes: In my entire motoring life in England I haven't heard of anyone in the past 20 years buy a recent car that suffered any damage from the salt on the roads - you're not driving through drifts of it.

Irrespective, I'd rather take a chance on the 'salt damage' on a higher spec, better maintained 5 year old UK car and save €€€ than most of the shoddy examples you see on forecourts here that aren't even prepped for for sale, with crap history.

Sandwich

Many dealers also choose to keep their prices high in the short term to maintain their book value accounting reasons, rather than have them follow the market price. They can then hope they shift them anyway, the market improves, or, they take the hit for the loss at a time that suits them best. End of April approaching!

ballooba

I've had my car up on CarZone since this day last week. I had a guy viewing today, another guy tomorrow and another expected between now and Monday.

I just reckon you have to price realistically. Mine is well priced at the moment, having had it up over-priced before christmas with no calls.

galwaytt

Gatster wrote:

Are you actually serious? It's not the 70's you know, they don't make 'em like they used to :rolleyes: In my entire motoring life in England I haven't heard of anyone in the past 20 years buy a recent car that suffered any damage from the salt on the roads - you're not driving through drifts of it.

Irrespective, I'd rather take a chance on the 'salt damage' on a higher spec, better maintained 5 year old UK car and save €€€ than most of the shoddy examples you see on forecourts here that aren't even prepped for for sale, with crap history.

yes, yes, but the fact of it is, they still use it, and it does have some effect, especially if unchecked. Also, on modern cars, a lot of worry areas are hidden behind acres of plastic bumpers, etc, so it's not that obvious. Case in point: a local 01 imported Zafira here, once up on the lift............it'd give you the shivers - it was atrocious with rust on the bottom front valance, etc.

It's very obvious if you buy a motorbike over there, as there's nowhere to hide the damage, and exposed components take an absolute hammering. 1 winter, unchecked, can completely destroy the brake calipers.

Problem is, we migrate to priced cars (aka cheaper), and there's always a catch. If you're bringing in a car that's just 3 yrs old or something, it would be good, as it simply hasn't spent enough time on the road to be unduly affected.

You just need to be careful, that's all.

As for the general market question........I'm living proof, see my sig.........:p

jank

Its definately slow.
Hopefully it will pick up over the summer though as I still need to sell my own (sig)

Mitch Connor

well if anyone wants to sell a Seat Leon 1.6S for €15k i'll buy it!

JoeA3

galwaytt wrote:

yes, yes, but the fact of it is, they still use it, and it does have some effect, especially if unchecked. Also, on modern cars, a lot of worry areas are hidden behind acres of plastic bumpers, etc, so it's not that obvious. Case in point: a local 01 imported Zafira here, once up on the lift............it'd give you the shivers - it was atrocious with rust on the bottom front valance, etc.

It's very obvious if you buy a motorbike over there, as there's nowhere to hide the damage, and exposed components take an absolute hammering. 1 winter, unchecked, can completely destroy the brake calipers.

Problem is, we migrate to priced cars (aka cheaper), and there's always a catch. If you're bringing in a car that's just 3 yrs old or something, it would be good, as it simply hasn't spent enough time on the road to be unduly affected.

You just need to be careful, that's all.

As for the general market question........I'm living proof, see my sig.........:p

Another example - I know of MK5 VW Golf GTI's in the UK which are suffering bad wheel corosion on the polished/diamond cut 18" alloys. Its most likely down to the salt on the roads penetrating the laquer on the wheels. This was also a big problem in the MK4 Golf over there.

Marcus.Aurelius

I've seen a lot of French cars imported from the UK to Ireland and their underbellies are absolutely wretched from the salt damage, even some of the engines are rusty at the exhaust manifold!!!!

Mc-BigE

If people and dealers price their cars accordingly they will sell.

Its a buyers Market at the moment tbh i dont see it getting any better until people stop being creedy and price there cars to sell ,which sometimes means making a loss on cars. (as if buying cars in this country is an investment:rolleyes: )

its as simple as that.

Maybe the VRO office should also consider dropping their OMSP price for VRT on imported cars also?

louie

It's all about the price. When selling you have to take in consideration few points:

1. How long have you got it for?
2. How well did you service it?
3. How many miles have you done?
4. How well did you keep it?
.................etc.

for example if you paid for a car 1 year ago something like 12000 and looked after you should be able to get back on it around 8-9000 euro, but that still depends on many other factors, like miles, damages, service, etc.

I know somebody with a Ford Focus 03 that is looking for 5.500 for it, but haven't been looked after at all and in my opinion the car is not even worth 3000.