Now I realize most of you aren't into cars as a hobby or anything like that. I'm sure most of you have a favorite truck/muscle car/sports car but if you aren't addicted like I am you'll probably have missed the phenomenon that has taken over the used car market since the last stimmy hit. Now I've been following used car prices for damn near most of my adult life. There have been certain enthusiast platforms that have taken off in value over the last decade, largely due to the exploding popularity of drifting, and the lack of replacements for those older platforms(Nissan 240sx, RX-7/RX-8, Anything Toyota that's RWD). The Cash for Clunkers disaster only served to exacerbate the issue as well. But usually, a diligent search would net you a cheap one if you were willing to put in the sweat equity to bring it back to health. Usually this was limited to enthusiast cars, if you wanted(or needed) a daily driver, 1500-2500 would bag you a decent Accord or Camry or maybe even a mini truck or body on frame SUV. It was like this up to a few months ago. I don't know if it's because people want to try to make money to cover for losing their job, or if it's that the stimulus has people seeing dollar signs, but regular plain jane used cars that were 1000-2500 are now getting asking prices of 3,4,5000 dollars. Hell I saw a non runner in decent shape that I thought might make a cheap track toy listed for $690 and thought I might as well see if dude still has it, and this mother[uck fay]er had the audacity to tell me he wanted 1800 US AMERICAN DOLLARS for a non running 24 year old Honda Accord that looks like dog shit with mismatched panels. [uck fay]s sake, man. I don't make a whole lot of money, but there are tons of people making like 9-10-11 dollars an hour with their car falling apart, on it's last legs, with rent and bills and shit, and all these dumbasses trying to make a buck on some shithouse cars have priced them out of not only a replacement, but maybe out of a job. I hope to God this is a bubble, because America is not designed for public transport and poor people are being priced out of driving more and more and at an increasing rate.
Inflation is going to make a nasty run, and I don’t think the Fed can or will fight it by raising interest rates. the fed has two options, Bankrupt the government or the people. If you thought the 2020 election was nasty, wait till 2024.
My 2011 F-150, which I bought new, has 140,000 miles on it. They're selling, right now, for 20 to 22k. It's stupid. I had a 79 Ford Bronco in high school, bought another one for parts. I wrecked the good one, sold both for 3500 at the age of 18. I thought I had made a hell of a business deal. Now, I could have gotten about 6k a piece for them
It’s completely insane. I’ve got a 2018 GMC truck I bought used a year ago. Was considering buying a new Ford and checked to say the going rate for mine, about 15% more than I paid a year ago.
You also may be unaware that due to the overproduction of platinum, palladium and rhodium are now very rare-- either of which are present in catalytic converters. This is why those are being stolen like crazy, and why any used car running or not is automatically a lot more valuable than it was before.
How does it get nastier than people storming the capitol to overturn the election and trying to kill cops? Love the pattern of the country being ran into the ground and then blaming the guy who just takes office, though. It has been super helpful to America.
Interesting. I’ve heard multiple people I know say they’ve had them stolen recently but had no idea why this has become a thing.
I think both sides are to blame. I’ve said that trump failed to cut and added to the spending. That was a huge failure. We have way more government and spending than we can afford and we’re going to pay for it through inflation and it’s going to hit the poorest the hardest.
The used car market has gone up a lot due to lowered interest rates, which has caused the sticker price to go up at dealerships, which has allowed non-dealerships to also charge more. It's a simple path problem, involving balancing an equation. If 10-15 years ago a financial institution doing car loans was making X off a loan amount Y at Z interest rate, and Z is now half... in order to continue to make X, Y must increase.
But almost every lending sector of our society is way overleveraged. We didn't deflate the bubble in 08. We just started inflating more and it's going to be nasty once it pops.
In what way? If anything, surviving and thriving during '08, and then doing the same barely 12 years later with COVID shows that we are not over leveraged. If you had been told a pandemic would shut down pretty much every industry for fully 4 weeks, and then gone to 50% capacity for year for most of the rest, you, like everyone else, would be thinking about how horrible the economy would be. But then you look at it's not. Hard to make that case that it isn't where it we'd all have thought it would be, and be over leveraged.
I have read where there is a chip shortage causing a shortage of new and used cars. Obviously less cars = higher prices.
You might as well just buy new if you're in the market for a lightly used car right now. My mom went to a Honda dealer looking for a CRV, test drove a used one they were listing for 21k. Then she found out they had a new one for 25k. She test drove the new one and decided to buy it. 4k more for 50k fewer miles.
Was this way back in 2016 when I went to buy a car. used ones were 20,000 and a new one was 25,000. I guess cars last so long now (wife's is approaching 300,000 miles on it) that a 50,000 mile car is practically brand new.
