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In excellent condition
Page 68
Page 69
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British Car Auctions is the latest company to report a strong start to light CV sales this year. UK business development manager Duncan Ward explains.
Despite the fact that new light CV registrations have showed the first signs of slowing after some 60 months of continuous growth, demand remains very strong in the used market.
Our first major sales of the year at Blackbushe, Belle Vue and Measham each offering over 400 vehicles attracted huge crowds and competitive bidding. Across the board, over 75% of the entries were sold with strong results for Royal Mail. Lex, LTS11 LeasePlan, Lombard, Bank of Scotland and Citroen. Other sales around the network returned equally strong results, notably at Newport. Bedford. Glasgow and Nottingham.
This good start for 2006 follows on from a strong close to last year. The market enjoyed an extremely busy autumn and early winter in terms of demand.attendance. conversion and price,certainly compared to the rest of the year. Some corporate sales sections enjoyed 1()0(1/0 conversions and the demand kept going right to the end of the year.
Reaping the rewards
Even with all this good news, reserve prices are critical at the moment. Buyers follow brands and those that have a keen sense of value, despite daily changes, stand to benefit. Buyers are drawn to the best and cleanest vans and the last thing they want is a fistful of provisional bids at the end of the day and an unfulfilled stock quota. Nothing energises an auction hall more than the hammer going down.
As we saw last year, there are plenty of buyers around with a £3,000-£4,000 budget. However. January has seen a resurgence of interest in higher-priced light CVs with the late-year market notably strong. It remains lobe
seen if this is along-term trend.
High-mileage remains a turnoff for buyers, while condition is still more important than age.The over-supply of poorly presented MWB/LWB panel vans continues and buyers are still working to tight budgets.This means that there is little opportunity for speculative buying.
Vendors are getting the best results when their vehicles are valued sensibly in line with market sentiment. While guides have an important role to play in benchmarking. problems can occur if vendors slavishly follow them to the exclusion of everything else. Vendors should benchmark and measure performance— but ultimately in a competitive auction environmen t. everything will find its true market value. •