Used car prices decrease nationally and locally

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - The Covid-19 pandemic brought used car prices to levels few had seen before. Many dealerships are still showing prices higher than pre-pandemic numbers, but that may be changing soon.

Manheim Market Insights found that nationally, used car prices decreased by 4.2 percent between June and May of this year.

Anyone who has considered buying a used car in the past few years knows just how much the cost has gone up. One of the biggest reasons is supply and demand.

“So my understanding of what happened during Covid was manufacturing was down from Covid took the computer chips out and really just slowed up the new car manufacturing which drove up the prices on the used car values,” said Jeremy Jacobs, an owner of 605 Auto.

While vehicles in the Black Hills haven’t seen quite the same price decrease as nationally, one dealer argues this is because supply locally was not as impacted.

“You know we’re really lucky where we live here in the Midwest Mountain area that our prices have stayed really strong like thinking you see things happening on each coast is really not indicative of what happens in our area, but prices have really stayed strong,” said Joe Bennington, a sales manager at Gateway Autoplex.

Jacobs says this may have been because of good practices by dealers in the area.

“During Covid, a lot of dealerships because of this supply and demand were marking up their vehicles quite a bit. In Rapid City the new car dealers were not, they were certainly selling at MSRP but today things have changed and rebates are back and you should be able to get a fair deal on a vehicle today.”

It’s uncertain how the market could change over the next few months but both dealers said they expect to see prices continue to fall until they return to pre-pandemic levels.

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