Seems my Focus CC3 is holding its price much better than I could have expected.
Similar cars to mine are on Autotrader for a bit more than I paid last March.
Even the Glass's link on the Vauxhall website only shows a trade price loss of about £1,000.
New cars are supposed to depreciate at an alarming rate, so it's little short of amazing mine is still worth anywhere near what I paid for it.
Or is it?
One of the Back Room's resident traders mentioned increased used prices recently.
Perhaps credit crunch and scrappage has distorted the market.
Maybe CC3s in Blue di Cina are ultra-desirable. :)
Or have all new cars sold in the last year held their value?
If you have a 58 or 09-reg, how do you think it's performed value-wise?
|
Only in the UK.
We bought a new Fabia earlier this year for a shade under 8,000 euros under the scrappage scheme in Spain. A quick search reveals I could pay today the same price for a 2007 model with 50,000km on the clock!
The UK has quite an advanced market, plus an oversupply of RHD cars which can't be used for anything much. Contrast to somewhere like Spain which has LHD cars (big demand from all over Europe), a non-existant supply of good quality used cars (not many new are sold, those that are - end up in a right state!), a marketplace which is 30 years behind the times (no car supermarkets, just small traders with tiny stocks and massive mark-ups), and high taxes (up to 30% payable to register a car, 4% each time you transfer to a new keeper) - and you have a recipe for artificially high second hand prices.
In your case, a desirable model has probably had the biggest impact on the residuals of your car. Oversupply will always be the gravity which keeps things real in the UK.
|
..a desirable model has probably had the biggest impact on the residuals of your car...
Yes, I think late MkII CC3s are desirable since it's fairly widely accepted they don't leak like earlier ones.
Ford also seem to keep increasing the list price - currently £25K+ for a car in my spec.
No-one pays that, but even with a substantial discount a new one is £20K, which has to keep late used values firm.
|
|
|
|
....... Blue di Cina .........
That's about as descriptive as Mumbo-Jumbo Blue! Car colour names have gone mad.
|
...... Blue di Cina ...That's about as descriptive as Mumbo-Jumbo Blue!...
No it's not, it's very stylish, happening, Italian, elegant, aspirational.
Or it's dark blue, but I prefer the former. :)
|
No it's not, it's very stylish, happening, Italian, elegant, aspirational.
Whatever!
;-)
|
|
|
|
Fiat Panda Dynamic bought Jan 2009 for £6300 (may have been 6200, I cannot remember - local dealer was prepared to match Fiatsupasaver price).
1.3TD Diesel 5-door Hatchback
Year: 2009 58
Mileage: 3,000
From Glasses
Part-exchange Price:
Excellent condition:£6530
Average condition:£5770
Below average condition: £5070
A better guide is what you would be offered by webuyanycar.com
6 weeks ago £5300
|
The golden rule .
Something is only worth what someone will pay cash !
|
The golden rule . Something is only worth what someone will pay cash !
>>
The guides are just that. I've never px'd a car and got Glasses price for it. I bought a £10k Jetta in Sept08, did 20k in it and sold it for £1500 less than I bought it for. And the dealer who bought it put it up for £11k.
I think most people who bought well in 08 have done quite ok for depreciation.
|
I think most people who bought well in 08 have done quite ok for depreciation.
And will continue to - until the warranty period ends.
watch the residuals fall then!
|
Not just applicable to new cars. My old Mondeo estate has gone up in value in the past twelve months. I had it valued this time last year on one of those we-buy-any-wreck.co.uk type sites. Did it again last week for fun with considerably more miles on it and it comes out £300 better.
Still can't bring myself to part with it though. It's still the best thing we have as a bike transport, tip car and general shifter etc.
|
|
|
|
I think most people who bought well in 08 ..
Purely by accident, I bought an ex-rental exactly a year ago at what now looks like the optimal moment. When I checked recently, identical cars of the same age were up for about £500 more than I paid - and as my p/x was over 9 years old I didn't suffer much there either.
|
I've noticed the same as Humph with my 100,000ml Mondeo III GhiaX Estate. Nearly p/ex'd it 12mths ago at what we now know was the lowest ebb of the recession car market. From the online guides and prices at BCA the other week seems I'd get £500 more now even though it's tipped over the 100K.
Also about 18mths ago we could have bought a relatives one-owner C3 HDi at their offered trade in price. Had we done so we could have re-sold now at a decent profit due to the very strong values on clean diesel hatchbacks.
Edited by M.M on 06/12/2009 at 14:28
|
|
My wifes Sirion was bought last year in December - that seems to have been almost the optimal moment to buy. Now, for the same money as she paid for a new car, she would only get a year old car with 15k on the clock now.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
At four years old my C class 180 automatic was valued at £3000 against a £12000 Kia by the local main agent. Needless to say I am still driving my Mercedes !
|
|
|
|
At four years old and 46000 miles my Mercedes 180 estate, automatic, was valued at £3000 by a local Kia agent against a new £12000 car. Needless to say I am still driving my Mercedes !
|
|
Blimey - I was offered the same part ex against a new Sportage and mine is a 2003 Ford Focus!
|
|
Our Aygo is almost three years old and we've had it since new. A quick look on Autotrader is showing the same cars with more mileage for £10 less than we paid for ours!
Edited by daveyjp on 06/12/2009 at 19:45
|
We've been shopping around to replace our '07 Civic 2.2 CTDi of late and were very surprised by both its trade in value and the apparent pointlessness of buying a nearly new car at the moment.
Firstly the Glass's (paid for) valuation for our car's trade-in was surprisingly high at nearly 75% of the original purchase price for "above average" condition, truth was that dealers wanted to give the "good" condition figure which was about £1K less whilst they all commented the car matches any definition of excellent (and low mileage).... However what this said to me was that the Glass's valuation was very optimistic - being hardly less than dealer retail and higher than private sale, certainly the free valuation from Whatcar was right on the money. Nevertheless both were at least £1K more than I expected and we had no trouble getting this offered to us.
Second surprise was the screen prices for 'new' used cars e.g. an 09 but 58reg Ford Focus Zetec 1.6 at £13K - I wouldn't pay more than that for a new one. A few years back an ex rental Zetec Focus would be making about 75% of list after 6 months from memory.
So strange times, the relentless increase in manufacturer prices (e.g. Ford) should help as it is the discounts on new cars (e.g. to rental fleets) which depress used prices. A continued shortage of quality used cars due to poor new-car sales (possibly compounded by rising prices) should also help.
I think that the market is changing, maybe to something more like those elsewhere in Europe with UK residual values improving and/or people keeping their cars longer ?
As a postscript, we had one of the very first MGFs - possibly no. 1045 (embarrassing now I know) - we sold that back to the dealer after 10 months at a £2K profit, made the mistake of buying another one (upgrading to VVC) but that's another story.
Edited by idle_chatterer on 06/12/2009 at 20:51
|
I just thought of a good analogy..... might be stating the obvious so I apologise if it is.
Pretty much any car you buy was manufactured outside the UK (a sweeping generalisation I know), certainly all the direct profits are appropriated outside the UK - so you're buying in EUR or KRW (Korean Won) really.
If you'd bought these currencies 18 months ago you'd have got more for your money (or paid less for a given amount). Now if you sell these currencies today you'll get more (in UKP terms) and have made a paper profit, arguably not a real profit because you cannot buy any more with it outside your own country.
So, you can sell your car bought when prices were low in a market where locally (UKP) new prices have risen considerably due to currency devaluation (and maybe factors such as economies of scale versus fixed costs for manufacturers), as the used value is to some extent a percentage of the new one then you'll have benefited.
There are many other factors like lower supply (due to decreased new-car sales) which will help although decreased demand could be a bigger factor in the medium term.
Edited by idle_chatterer on 06/12/2009 at 21:12
|
|
My local dealer had a Fabia VRS on an 06 plate with 12K for £9995. Three odd grand in three years aint bad.
|
|
|
idle chatter
What you missed in your comprehensive treatise was the fact the UK pricing for euro made cars was lagging the exchange rate by about 9-12 months.
Hence my decision to buy new in December 2008 - I could see what was likely to happen to UK car list prices.
Edited by pmh3 on 06/12/2009 at 21:32
|
What you missed in your comprehensive treatise was the fact the UK pricing for euro made cars was lagging the exchange rate by about 9-12 months. Hence my decision to buy new in December 2008 - I could see what was likely to happen to UK car list prices.
Good point although we hadn't decided to change SWMBO's car at that point, our original plan was to keep it much longer but SWMBO has tired of the hard ride and poor rear visibility of the Civic, after time these outweighed its undoubted other merits (2.2 CTDi engine for instance).
I also think that the 'price to change' has possibly not widened by much in that time either, I think we might be getting as much as £1500 more for the Civic now than we'd have got in late 2008 but I can't say for sure as we didn't explore the option at the time.
The market is (academically) interesting, exchange rates are only one factor - old fashioned economics like demand curves set the selling prices of cars, manufacturers have to balance their fixed costs with volumes, profitability and selling price, as I said, I think a major change is happening.
As for exchange rates, the delays will have been a combination of hedging and perhaps distributors /manufacturers hoping that major trends were just transient blips ?
|
|
|
|
|
|
