Used car market in Russia 2023: demand grows in August

The used car market continued to grow in August – demand, according to marketplaces, was 3% higher than in the previous month. The average price of a used car also continues to rise slowly. Analysts believe that the trend will continue in the coming months, but there will be no rush growth in sales – the segment of new cars is still too small for relatively new cars to actively enter the used market again.

Demand for used cars continued to rise in August. According to Avito Auto, it increased by 8.6% compared to the same period last year and by 3.6% compared to July, says Vadim Ivanov, head of the Automotive division at Avito. At the same time, the offer remained at the level of the previous month, he continues.

The most popular brands at Avito in August were VAZ (Lada), Toyota, Hyundai, Kia and Volkswagen. The rating of the most popular used car models was headed by Lada Priora, which accounted for 4.8% of the total demand, says Vadim Ivanov, and among foreign cars – Ford Focus (2.1%). Most often, cars are searched for in Moscow and the Moscow Region (the share of demand is 17.6%), and the average price of offers in these regions is 1.65 million rubles. Also in the lead are the Krasnodar Territory (6.6%, 1 million rubles), St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region (5.7%, 1.2 million rubles), the Rostov Region (3.4%, 890 thousand rubles), and also Bashkiria (3.3%, 758 thousand rubles). The average price in the Russian Federation increased by 1.2% compared to July, amounting to 901 thousand rubles.

Droma has not yet summed up the results of August, but according to the results of January-July, they also name the best-selling Lada Priora model. “From January to July 2023, 29.4 thousand cars of this model were sold. This is 14% more than in the same period last year,” they say. Avtostat called this model the best in terms of residual value (residual value) in the second quarter in the segment of cars aged seven years – seven years after the purchase, the average figure is 127.8%. AvtoVAZ stopped production of Priora in 2018.

Demand for used cars in August at Avto.ru increased by 3% compared to July and by 20% compared to June, says Alexei Mukhanov, head of the company’s research and client analytics group. He adds that, however, demand has yet to recover to early 2022 levels. In addition, the trend to remove ads in August continued on this site in August: the number of cars removed from publication increased by 3% compared to July, by 20% compared to June and by 8% in annual terms, says Alexey Mukhanov. He attributes this to the increase in sales: “The growth in demand led to a reduction in the supply of used cars on Avto.ru, by the end of August the number of ads decreased by almost 7% compared to the beginning of July.”

According to Avtostat’s preliminary estimate, the used car market in Russia grew by 29.9% in August, to 570,000 cars. Last month, the discrepancy between the preliminary estimate and the final result (511.8 thousand) was about 6 thousand cars.

Sergey Udalov from Avtostat notes that the used car market is rather flat this year – sales are slowly growing month by month, but there is no noticeable upward trend, as in sales of new cars. He points out that the lack of bursts in demand is due, among other things, to the relatively small volumes of the market for new cars. Recall that only in August, sales of new cars, according to the agency, exceeded 100 thousand per month for the first time since the beginning of the crisis (for more details, see Kommersant-Online of September 5). As a result, a situation is not created, as in previous years, when the release of a new Hyundai Creta or Solaris model led to a surge in sales in the used market, where car owners sold cars of previous generations, says Mr. Udalov. Relatively new cars are now turning very little in the used segment, “those who switch to Chinese or Lada brands are now either buying a car for the first time, or their cars are merging into the total market,” he adds. The situation in the segment is very stable, and such dynamics will continue, the analyst believes.

Olga Nikitina