Turkey’s online used car market prices hike, sales drop
Secondhand cars are seen in the central Eskişehir province, Turkey, Nov. 2, 2020. (IHA Photo)


Sales in Turkey’s secondhand online passenger and light commercial vehicle market decreased by 3% on a monthly basis in August, while vehicle prices increased by an average of 2.23%.

According to the data compiled by Anadolu Agency (AA) from Indicata's secondhand online market report, 140,608 sales were made in the second-hand online passenger and light commercial vehicle market in Turkey last month.

Sales fell 3% compared to July and 37% compared to August 2020. In the eight months of this year, sales decreased by a total of 23% year-on-year.

In August, the share of passenger cars in secondhand online sales was 83%, while the share of light commercial vehicles was 17%.

In the January-August period of this year, 2.46 million individual advertisements were published in the secondhand online market, while 44% of the vehicles whose advertisements were published were sold.

In August, the number of vehicles advertised in the secondhand online passenger and light commercial market increased by 17% compared to the previous month. Some 43% of the vehicles advertised were sold.

According to the analysis made by examining the price changes of 42,930 advertisements of 1,200 variants of 200 models of the top 28 brands with the highest sales in the secondhand market, in 15 different model years, the prices in the secondhand online passenger and light commercial vehicle market average increased by 2.23% in August compared to the previous month. In the January-August 2021 period, there was an average 6.8% price increase.

The highest price increase was reported in the light commercial vehicle group with 9.3%. This was followed by segments A with 7.9% and B with 7.6%.

When the market is evaluated by engine type, diesel cars took the lion’s share in August with 89,306 sales, giving it a 63.51% share.

Diesel cars were followed by gasoline-powered cars and Autogas cars with 47,929 sales with a 34.09% market share and 1,572 sales with 1.12% of the market.

The share of hybrid cars was 1.06% with 1,494 sales, and the share of electric cars was 0.22% with 307 sales.

On the segment basis, the market leader was the C segment with some 46,601 C segment cars sold, taking a 40% share in last month’s overall sales.

The C segment was followed by B with a 23% market share and 26,861 vehicles sold, and the D segment with 21,473 sales giving it an 18.4% share.

Indicata, a business intelligence set that combines machine learning, artificial intelligence and big data, analyzes more than 450,000 used vehicle data daily by scanning the secondhand online vehicle market in Turkey.

While the sales data in the report are based on the advertisement data given by the institutions and organizations engaged in secondhand trade in the online market, it does not include data on individual vehicle advertisements. Institutions that trade secondhand on the online platform are withdrawing the advertisements of the vehicles they offer for two reasons. Firstly, they revise the prices of the vehicles in the advertisement according to the changing market conditions and publish the advertisement again. Indicata also monitors when these ads are re-published.

Secondly, the trading institution withdraws advertisements because it has sold it to a broker, and publishes an advertisement for a broker that will re-sell the vehicle. This second group of vehicle listings, that is, vehicles that are completely removed from the listing, are considered "sold."