Just noticed in the forums (Audi-related) that folks who have tried selling their car to carvana recently has had their sales canceled. Carvana says they are now only doing trades, no more purchasing without a sale.
Has anyone here had that experience? If so, this is a major hit to anyone looking to get their car appraised and sold quickly at a good value. Maybe they got wise to it?
I’ve seen lots of people talking about getting really low offers from them lately. This is probably a good sign that rather than them just doing low offers from here on out that maybe they’ll cut things off for a bit and then get back to normal.
Carvana “wised up” at least a week ago. I tried to appraise the Ioniq when our Ioniq club was falling apart and not only the offer was low, it was a trade in only. I got lucky to sell them my Optima a few days before it all went to hell. Here it is BTW https://www.carvana.com/vehicle/1435152
Was contemplating buying out my civic hatchback ex and upgrading a few weeks ago. Didn’t act and there goes that plan. Carvana’s offer for my car dropped from 21.5k to 19k in 2 weeks. Had a similar experience with Vroom and Shift as well, they’re only offering it for trades. https://vroom.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040838952-Can-I-still-sell-my-vehicle-to-Vroom-at-this-time-
Seems to be a pattern. Guess the crisis forced these companies to reevaluate where they spend their money and how.
Well if people aren’t buying cars. Why are they holding inventory right?
Well when 20%+ of the country isn’t working and 30% isn’t sure what’s going to happen and another 30% is cutting expenses, probably don’t need to get any inventory.
And what inventory they DO buy, get it at basement price!
Ha exactly, they must be short on cash if they won’t even give you a low ball number on a buy only/no trade.
Don’t doubt it.
I’ve noticed vroom has slowly started lowering their reserve prices on cars they put on eBay as well.
You are gonna see millions of cars sold cheaply and repossessed in the next 2 years…the dust will settle and many will be out of work and business closed forever. Lots of ppl will stop making payments in cars and the market will be flooded with vehicles. Many families own 2…3…or…4 cars and will realize that they can only afford 1 now or none.
These companies are sitting on big inventories that they acquired using prices from an algorithm that didn’t take a pandemic into consideration. They will be able to hold gross on many of them for extended periods of time but eventually, if the demand softens enough they will be forced to drop prices to where the natural demand is to get off of them. That is when they will realize the true risk.
In the mean time, it would make no sense to acquire cars unless they can pick them up for guaranteed gains assuming large drops to both wholesale and retail prices in the next 180 days.
I’d imagine their acquisition volume has dropped 80-90% in the last 30 days.
We get it: it’s the Dust Bowl outside your (former) front door. You, a hobo, and a mangy dog are all fighting for the same can of beans down by the railroad tracks where you live. The dog has his Series 7 and used to manage a mutual fund, which is why he turns the crank on the one remaining car when it’s time to go into town for more dented cans of beans.
On the flip side, they’re not making new cars right now so no new inventory. Zero. One big strike for every automaker. (F the unions!) Who knows when they’ll start back up. Could be months and still takes a while for new cars to hit the lots. What is available are used cars. Lots of them. So they could become the hot commodity by the end of the year.
Doubtful, where’s the demand when everyone is broke?
The demand for the cool cars will always be there. Your Malibu or Cruze, not so much.
Good point. Forgot the third option. ZERO car sales. A definite possibility. Adios Ford and GM?
Truck sales are the only thing not impacted by COVID, for some ungodly reason.
Didn’t Volvo restart their factories in China? S90 production? When those get delivered it will be like Forest Gump and Major Dan coming into port after the hurricane.
Wouldn’t there be demand from people with savings. Seems obvious, but 50% of financial shows and experts say 6 months of emergency savings? If this isn’t an emergency, what is. Perhaps they also don’t say buy a new car during an emergency. Never heard that one.
I lived through 2008. So once bitten twice shy for me.