Average price for a used car hits $29,000

DETROIT – A woman recently visited Jeff Schrier’s used car lot in Omaha, Nebraska. She was on a tight budget, she said, and was desperate for a vehicle to commute to work.

She was shown three cars priced at her limit, roughly $7,500. Schrier said the woman was stunned.

“‘That’s what I get for $7,500?’ ” he recalled her saying. The vehicles had far more age or mileage than she had expected for something to replace a car that had been totaled in a crash.

The woman eventually settled on a 2013 Toyota Scion with 160,000 miles. Schrier isn’t sure he made any profit on the deal. “We just helped her out,” he said.

As prices for used vehicles blow past any seemingly rational level, it is the kind of scenario playing out at many auto dealerships across the country. Prices have soared so high, so fast, that buyers are being increasingly priced out of the market.

Consider that the average price of a used vehicle in the United States in November, according to Edmunds.com, was $29,011 – a dizzying 39% more than just 12 months earlier. And for the first time that anyone can recall, more than half of America’s households have less income than is considered necessary to buy the average-priced used vehicle.

The days when most people with a steady income could wander onto an auto lot and snag a reliable late-model car or buy their kid’s first vehicle for a few thousand dollars have essentially vanished.

“I’ve never seen anything remotely close to this – it’s craziness,” said Schrier, who has been selling autos for 35 years. “It’s quite frustrating for so many people right now.”

When the government reported that consumer inflation rocketed 6.8% in the 12 months that ended in November – the sharpest jump in nearly 40 years – the biggest factor, apart from energy, was used vehicles. And while the rate of increase is slowing, most experts say the inflated vehicle prices aren’t likely to ease for the foreseeable future.

The blame can be traced directly to the pandemic’s eruption in March of last year. Auto plants suspended production to try to slow the virus’ spread. As sales of new vehicles sank, fewer people traded in used cars and trucks. At the same time, demand for laptops and monitors from people stuck at home led semiconductor makers to shift production from autos, which depend on such chips, to consumer electronics.

When a swifter-than-expected economic rebound boosted demand for vehicles, auto plants tried to restore full production. But chip makers couldn’t respond fast enough. And rental car companies and other fleet buyers, unable to acquire new vehicles, stopped off-loading older ones, thereby compounding the shortage of used vehicles.

Bleak as the market is for used-car buyers, the computer chip shortage has also driven new-vehicle prices higher. The average new vehicle, Edmunds.com says, is edging toward $46,000.

Even so, prices of used cars are

likely to edge closer to those of new ones. Since the pandemic started, used vehicle prices have jumped 42% – more than double the increase for new ones. Last month, the average used vehicle price was 63% of the average new vehicle cost. Before the pandemic, it was 54%.

At this point, Schrier has to tell lower-income buyers that he has very few used vehicles to sell them.

“What used to be a $5,000 car,” he said, “is now $8,000. What used to be $8,000 is now $11,000 or $12,000.”

Including taxes, fees, a 10% down payment and an interest rate of around 7.5%, the average used vehicle now costs $520 a month, even when financed for the average of nearly six years, Edmunds calculated.

To make that payment and afford such other necessities as housing, food and utilities, a household would have to take home about $60,000 a year, or $75,000 before taxes, said Kimberly Palmer, a personal finance specialist at Nerdwallet. In 2020, the U.S. median pretax household income was $67,521, the Census Bureau says.

“The average person,” Palmer said, “can’t afford the average used car right now.”

Ivan Drury, a senior manager at Edmunds, said that while he doesn’t track used vehicle prices relative to household income, he thinks November marked a record “in the worst way possible for affordability.”

Monthly payments for the average used vehicle, he noted, were $413 two years ago, $382 five years ago and $365 a decade ago.

The November average payment of $500-plus for a used vehicle, Drury said, is about the average that was needed five years ago for a brandnew vehicle.