The used-vehicle market kept its footing in May, with wholesale prices rising 3.6% year over year\u2014and used EV values jumping nearly 12%\u2014as elevated fuel prices and steady demand continued to push buyers toward pre-owned inventory. For independent dealers, that pricing strength is the number worth watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The firmness comes as the broader auto market posted its first monthly year-over-year gain of 2026. New light-vehicle sales reached a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 16.1 million units in May, up 3.1% from a year earlier, according to NADA. Raw volume hit 1.47 million units\u2014up 4.2% year over year and 7.0% from April\u2014helped by five weekends, including the Memorial Day holiday. Still, the year-to-date SAAR of 15.7 million remains down 4.5% from last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Affordability is still the pressure point. The average new-vehicle monthly payment climbed to roughly $810, even as loan rates eased to 6.59% and more buyers stretched into 84-month-plus terms\u2014conditions that often steer shoppers toward the used lot. Powertrain trends are diverging, too, with hybrids reaching 15.2% of year-to-date sales while battery-electric volume fell more than 30% year over year. With analysts holding to a 16.0-million-unit full-year forecast, well-priced used stock and strong resale values position independents well heading into summer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The used-vehicle market kept its footing in May, with wholesale prices rising 3.6% year over year\u2014and used EV…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6380,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_appearance_grid":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-industry","category-sales-marketing","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/niada.com\/dashboard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/niada.com\/dashboard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/niada.com\/dashboard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niada.com\/dashboard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niada.com\/dashboard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/niada.com\/dashboard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7332,"href":"https:\/\/niada.com\/dashboard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7331\/revisions\/7332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niada.com\/dashboard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/niada.com\/dashboard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niada.com\/dashboard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niada.com\/dashboard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}