January vehicle values improve as dealers prep for spring

Vehicle values in January were “much better” year over year as dealers begin stocking their inventories for the busier spring season, Scott Yarbrough, senior analyst at Black Book, told Powersports Finance.

“This time of year generally marks the transition at the wholesale level from the slow winter market to the much more active spring selling season,” Yarbrough said in a report. “Keep an eye out for more and larger gains for most units over the next few months.”

Several categories, such as cruisers, snowmobiles and street bikes, saw an improvement in values this month, whereas only one category saw growth compared with the same time last year. While there isn’t one concrete reason for why values improved YoY, “last winter was a very weak period across the board,” Yarbrough said. 2019’s spring market got a late start in April, possibly due to bad weather in some regions and consumer concern over the state of the economy.

On a month-over-month basis, vehicle values were mixed. Snowmobiles saw the largest increase in pricing, jumping 2.5% month over month. Metric cruisers followed, rising 1.5% month over month. Domestic V-Twin values increased 0.6%.

“Within that cruiser segment, the larger touring bikes have performed a bit better than their smaller stablemates, something we have not seen in quite a while,” Yarbrough wrote in the report. “The overall amounts were not huge, but it is still interesting and worth keeping an eye on in the future.”

The majority of the off-road segments saw a decline in value, with ATVs dropping 2%. UTVs were down 1%, while off-road motorcycles rose 0.5%.