The Gavel - 19th September
Our resident auction experts Andy Conde and Stuart Peak share their views on the current wholesale market.
Andy Conde - Cars
The beginning of September has been extremely brisk to say the least.
Vehicle entries have been low while demand has been unbelievably high and this has led to high cap values, and many of our vendors selling 100% of their stock at the first time of asking, with the rest not far behind.
Retail confidence is as high as it’s been all year, and it’s very encouraging to see the prices that many of the early part exchanges are making. Dealers have been very conservative in pricing deals and are seeing some big profits as a result. Those that are not sending stock to auction at the moment need to keep a close eye on the market to make sure they don’t miss the boat.Looking ahead, I expect a higher volume of vehicles to start hitting the auctions in the weeks ahead. Personally, I don’t foresee a huge September influx this year, but there will definitely be enough supply to meet the current levels of buyer demand, and we can expect a slow-down in prices. Providing our vendors take this into account, there’s no reason why high conversion rates shouldn’t continue, but for now let’s take the advice of the age-old saying and make hay while the sun shines.
Stuart Peak - Commercial Vehicles
I’m pleased to say that the strong performance we saw in August has continued in the first two weeks of September, and the LCV market is still buoyant.
A shortage of good quality stock is helping to drive the market across the board, and in a parallel to the car market, top money is being paid for the cleanest, ready-to-retail stock.
High quality, well maintained 4-5 year old+ stock is certainly in short supply, so when it does appear at auction it makes top money. At a recent auction in Gloucester, we saw a batch of clean, well maintained six year old SWB Transit 280s achieving over 133% of CAP Average, and a batch of 15 plate base model customs also performed extremely well.
Our fantastic online and upstream selling routes continue to perform strongly, and over 20% of all LCV stock sold via a ‘Green Screen’ or ‘Shop Window’ last week. Lots of vendors are seeing the benefit of this, and we run continuous events for Zenith with their ‘Premium’ channel, AVIS with their ‘Instant’ channel and Hitachi with a ‘bid buy now’ event. Fresh stock is added daily to these events, and is available to buy 24/7.
Our buyers have really taken to online purchasing, and are choosing to buy stock when it suits them - a game changer! Whilst we talk about online sales, our simulcast sales continue to grow year on year as buyers see the benefit of bidding from the comfort of the offices, homes or even holiday destinations.
Trust is definitely the key to this, and our LCV Surecheck product, 360 degree imagery and detailed inspections reports, give buyers the confidence to make an informed decision without being at the sale physically.
