Move your used hybrids to the South East to maximise values

Lex, the UK’s largest vehicle leasing company has announced results of its analysis into the used car market by revealing that until another area of the UK introduces a congestion charge policy, the south east will be the most profitable area to sell a hybrid into the second hand market.

Lex believes that London’s congestion charge will continue to have a distorting impact on the used vehicle market in the south east, encouraging fleets and dealers to move hybrids and smaller cars in a bid to maximise used values.

Lex is also predicting that some south east based vendors may even consider moving their higher powered petrol engined cars above 2.0 litres to other geographic areas for disposal to speed up sale times.

And analysis undertaken by the UK’s leading leasing company has shown that used market trends will continue to shift over the next two or three years.

“The impending Vehicle Excise duty changes next year will place further cost constraints on consumers to discourage them from purchasing high emitting, less fuel efficient vehicles,” explained Andy Hartley, Director Vehicle Pricing, Procurement and Remarketing.

“As the availability of credit continues to reduce, some consumers who previously bought a new vehicle, will be forced to enter the used market instead, increasing prices and demand,” he added.

However, Andy Hartley sees this being countered by the continued increase in vehicle running costs, with fuel prices increasing by almost 20% in the past year adding considerably to the vehicle cost of ownership and forcing consumers to reassess their choices to meet their budget.

Andy Hartley comments;“A typical ex-fleet three year-old family vehicle now costs a consumer as much to run the vehicle for three years as it will to acquire when taking into account fuel, insurance, excise duty and servicing. Used buyers are currently looking to buy predominantly smaller used diesel vehicles.

Andy Hartley continues; “However, if the diesel/petrol price gap continues used buyers will question whether they travel enough miles to justify a diesel car and an extra 10p per litre, when some of the modern petrol engines return in excess of 40mpg,” he added.