When will the price of second hand cars reduce?

SafeSurfer

Second hand cars appear prohibitively expensive at the moment. What factors would help used car prices to return to a more normal level?

Increased supply of new cars? More electric car options?

A six year old Honda CRV is currently costing 50% more than the equivalent 4 years ago.

billyhead

How long is a piece of string?

monkeybutter

never is the most likely answer, its now pretty much a closed system, which is just what the dealers wanted and just what the government and well perhaps the brits gave them

bazz26

mickdw

When UK gets proper stock levels again after covid supply issues we will see more normal pricing.

Cars in UK are currently expensive so cars here are expensive.

Dealers are not paying double vat and I believe duty can also be exempt on newer than 3 year old car which originated in eu so dealers should be able to land cars here pretty similar to how they did before Brexit.

I don't see why we won't be able to bring in vat qualifying cars privately. It should be possible to buy vat qualifying car for export without paying vat but the various UK tax docs are pretty much sending me around in circles at the minute when I try to get a handle on it.

It's certainly possible to buy a nearly new car in NI vat free once it's for export to republic.

Casati

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118422584#Comment_118422584

The thing is most cars imported historically were 5/6 years old, and it looking like it will be impossible to import cars of this age going forward as duty/ vat/ not and vrt makes them so expensive. Add to that that sterling has gotten really strong against the euro. The U.K. also doesn't seem to be getting the cut price deals from European manufacturers, and the typical 20% new discount over there is gone so new prices there are way up.

New petrol and diesel cars are increasing in price here due to huge increases in VRT/ NOX. Manufacturing costs are increasing due to high energy and transportation costs which both look to be staying v high into the future so these cars will only get more expensive.

Manufacturers have tapped into a new market for their expensive EV's, people who would traditionally driven an auld banger but now has no issue forking out 60k on a Tesla or KIA EV with no discount. EV prices are showing no sign of falling - indeed they seems to be rising massively in price.

I think those buying new cars every three years might not be any worse off - as trade in prices will be very high, but everybody will have to get used to paying a lot more for a set of wheels

Fernagx

My advice would be to buy now.

It is not going to change any time soon. The main factors are:

1) Covid-19 - There's only a very few number of companies that make microchips for cars. All cars have microchips now. Covid caused these factories to shut/reduce capacity which forced car manufacturers to produce less new cars. This was coupled with we were buying more electronics online during the pandemic (TVs, games consoles, etc.) so microchips had to be produced for this need

2) Fire - Probably the biggest reason is the fire at one of the microchip factories (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56486242). It will take time to rebuild the factory so that microchip production resumes back to normal.

I was tempted to wait and ride it out. But I don't see it changing in the next 2 years.

bazz26

Buying now just induces the current state of the market though.

mickdw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118428610#Comment_118428610

Fair enough older stock may not come in from UK but that is no harm really.

Sterling is strong at the minute but who is to say what way that goes.

Hybrid and EV are not increasing due to vrt or nox as they are great value in that regard.

Diesel is being targeted by government policy so yes getting hard to bring in.

Poor deals in UK are directly due to low stock and low manufacturing levels. When things get back to normal over there, there is enough fleet buying activity to drive it back to expected situation - car fleet sales being tendered for and lots of fresh used fleet cars entering the market at under 3 years old.

All we need is time imo.

Car99

Drive whatever car you have for the next 10 years is my advice. Prices will level out when they reach a point where cost of purchasing a UK car plus vat, import tax and vrt make it financially worthwhile to buy a 5 year old car from the UK. It has to be this way because the UK is the only place ROI can source a large selection of used cars. There are not enough Audi and BMW sold new here to adequately meet the demand for used cars.