Americas Car Bubble
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Doug Horner has seen plenty of customers walk into his northeast Ohio Mercedes-Benz dealership who owe more on their trade-ins than those cars are worth. But being $40,000 underwater on a pickup truck is a scary sign of a growing trend.
A prospective buyer recently sought to trade in a Ford F-150 Lightning for a Mercedes GLE Coupe, but that potential customer owed about $87,000 on the pickup truck. Horner estimates the Ford pickup truck was worth about $47,000—leaving the buyer well underwater.
“This is a battle that we’re fighting every day,” Horner said in an interview.
More Americans turning in their cars to buy new ones are encountering a difficult reality: Their vehicles aren’t worth what they owe.
About 30% of borrowers in the first quarter who traded in a car to buy a new one had negative equity, whereby they owe more on their loan than their car is worth, according to car-shopping website Edmunds. Those borrowers owed about $7,200 on average before getting a new loan, a 42% jump compared with the same period five years prior.
“The higher it goes, the chances are that people are never going to get themselves out of the situation,” said Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at Edmunds.
About a third of Americans trading in an older car have negative equity, which has been typical in the industry for years. But the average amount Americans are underwater has skyrocketed, Edmunds said, as buyers try to unload cars bought during the pandemic at high prices.
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Yeah but at least with real estate there’s a sense that the value will climb over time for most people. Or so cars and phones.
I’ve heard people with not a lot of means talking about when they ‘get to’ upgrade their phone. They’ve just banked the idea that they’ll constantly have a phone payment but at least they ‘get to upgrade’ every two or three years like it’s some benefit of their plan and not an independent financial decision. I’m sure the same thought process goes into perpetual lease payers.
I was once car shopping and overheard a salesman ask another guy what he could afford. He gave an answer in terms of a monthly payment! You just know he walked out of there with a nicer car than he needed and a 7 year loan or some shit.
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