Jul. 13—Those who are in the market for a used vehicle might benefit from the news that inflation is finally entering the slow lane.
June's Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation, showed a 3% rise in the price of all items — the smallest 12-month increase since the period ending in March 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Over the last year, used vehicle prices have fallen 5.2%, including a 0.5% decrease in June. The best explanation for lower used car prices is the new car market, said David Summers, owner of Summers Motors in St. Joseph.
"When they started getting their new cars in, (the used car price) drops and they have trade-ins, which then that helps me to get trade-ins," he said. "Before, when they didn't have new cars to sell, people just had to buy used cars. So that made the used car market go up."
Summers said he still occasionally needs to ship vehicles in from out of state if he is seeking a popular model for his lot.
"We get most of them from new car dealers, and we do a lot of shipping in from Colorado and Texas and out of the state, especially our Jeeps because it's hard to get some of the cars," he said. "We try and buy from new car dealers because most of them are one-owner or two-owner."
Finding cars for his lot and paying above market price was an issue for Summers in the past. But as the used car market has improved, so have the prices, with one family finally finding the right deal.
Shannon Neal and her husband came to Summers Motors after spending months trying to find the right price on a used car for her son, Noah.
"We've been driving lots of different places and looking," she said. "And over the past eight or nine months, the prices are coming down again and it's more reasonable for him to be able to get that first car and pay for it, where, you know, a year or so ago the prices were way too high."
Noah and his family found a vehicle that checked all of their boxes, and he pulled off the Summers Motors lot in his first vehicle, a 2004 Chevrolet Silverado.
"We were looking for something for our son to get, and just not a brand new vehicle, but something inexpensive, under $10,000, under $9,000, that he could just get and pay off," she said. "And there wasn't anything. There wasn't a lot to choose from unless it was very, very small."
CPI reports show that drivers also are saving money at the gas pump. While fuel costs increased by 1% in June, they have decreased by 26.5% during the past year.