Used car prices continue to increase

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee (WDEF)- Tennessee and Georgia Car shoppers looking for a deal will be hard-pressed to find one as Used car prices continue to surge.

“The highly utilized truck with a lot of flexibility and the purely selfish, fun coupes and convertibles. Those are the two extremes that seem to have gone up in value the most,” said iSeeCars executives analyst Karl Brauer.

The average new vehicle price is over $38,000 according to JD Power.

For years, used cars have been a smart discount option for people looking to save money, but now used car prices are at record highs.

“People are hanging onto them because they can’t get the new car that they want and when you can’t get the new car that you are looking for and there’s a shortage of new cars and you keep your old car and those cars don’t turn into used cars for used car shoppers,” said Brauer.

Brauer said it’s due to several reasons but the biggest reason is due to people not being able to buy new cars due to a chip shortage in manufacturing

“People were stuck in their houses so they started buying more electric devices so there was this run on computer chips that nobody saw coming or was expected. it came barely as we were coming out of the constructions on producing everything including chips and now the cars are competing with electronics with the same supplier chips globally and there’s not enough to go around,” said Brauer.

Chattanooga Mayor and former auto dealership owner Tim Kelly said his administration is working with the chamber of commerce to find an economic development solution that will allow Chattanooga to continue to thrive beyond this pandemic.

Brauer said he expects this car shortage will last at least through the rest of 2021 so buying certain cars can be very expensive.

“But if you’re looking for a used car you have to look at what cars have gone up  the least in the past year because they’ve all gone up. There’s the Audi a seven Toyota Prius so you can find the occasional car out there that hasn’t gone up much at all in the past year but there’s only like 10 of them most of them have gone up anywhere from 10 to 25% in the last year,” said Brauer.