This was up from $40,692 in August, a rise of just $266, and an indicator that dealers think that at these prices they are asking close to the ceiling of buyer price expectations.

Even so, the latest asking price for September is some $14,300 higher than dealers were asking in July 2020 ($26,658) and, at $32,272, some $8686 more than in July 2021.

The Cox Automotive data tracks the asking prices of used cars when they are first posted online by dealers as a measure of the dealers’ highest expectations.

The data, gathered by Cox’s AutoRadar service, also tracks the price of the same cars when they are delisted as an indicator of the transaction prices achieved.

In terms of delisted prices that number has come in at a record $36,365 for September, up from $35,973 in August and marginally up from $36,135 in July. 

Again, while these prices are in a rarefied atmosphere compared with two years ago, the modest increases recorded by AutoRadar in recent months suggests the support for used car prices, while holding, is reaching its upper limits.

Last month we reported that attempts by dealers to drive used car transaction prices even higher, by raising used car asking prices even further when listing online, were proving difficult with the gap between listing and delisting prices getting even wider and approaching $5000 in August.

The August data showed a widening gap between listing prices (what dealers were hoping for) and the indicative transaction prices (delisting price).

In August it was running at a record $4719, up from $4476 in July and topping the previous all-time high gap of $3983 in May 2020 when dealers were clearing out used cars at the onset of COVID.

In September, however, the gap narrowed slightly (from $4719 in August to 4593 in September) and, since the asking prices on listings were up in that month, dealers were keeping a few hundred dollars more on average sales prices. 

In October last year the gap was just $153.

In terms of stock holdings, newly-listed used vehicles in September totalled 42,859 – a 10.5 per cent drop on August when 47,886 were added to online listings. This compares with 44,127 newly-added units in July and 46,340 in June.

Active used vehicles listed for sale in September totalled 83,930 compared with August which totalled 82,911 and July (81,101 units). June had 79,211 active vehicles.

The last time the market had more than 80,000 active vehicles was in March 2020 when there were 87,527 active vehicles in the early Covid selldown of used car stock.

By John Mellor