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The color of your car can make a $5,000 difference in how much you sell it for, according to a new automotive report.
Vehicle research site iSeeCars determined the average depreciation rate of used cars by looking at each model’s inflation-adjusted manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) and comparing it to the car’s list price. The report’s results were based on an analysis of more than 1.6 million used 2020 models sold between August 2022 to May 2023.
“Yellow cars continue to represent the greatest disparity between how many are produced and how many people want one,” iSeeCars Executive Analyst Karl Brauer says in a news release. “While not many people want a yellow car, there are clearly more people who want one than exist, which is why yellow performs so well on the secondary market. The same can be said of orange and green, colors you don’t see often but are obviously in higher demand than supply.”
Here are the key findings from the report:
Ready to see which car colors are the most “valuable”?
Rank/Color 3-year % Depreciation Dollar Difference from MSRP Compared to Overall Average
1. Yellow 13.5% $6.588 0.6x
2. Beige 17.8% $8,411 0.8x
3. Orange 18.4% $7,023 0.9x
4. Green 19.2% $8,719 0.9x
5. Red 20.6% $8,538 0.9x
6. White 21.9% $9,695 1x
7. Blue 22% $9,216 1x
8. Gray 22.5% $9.425 1x
9. Purple 22.7% $8,840 1x
10. Silver 23.2% $9,218 1x
11. Black 23.9% $10,867 1.1x
12. Brown 24% $10,305 1.1x
13. Gold 25.9% $11,546 1.2x
Overall Average 22.5% $9,674 --
Read the complete report at iSeeCars.com.
Money expert Clark Howard says, when you’re thinking about selling your vehicle, you should go through the selling process with both CarMax and Carvana to get a good sense of what it’s worth.
“The reality is that those two players have changed the game so much that what I recommend is that you start by getting a price from both of them,” Clark says. “Once you have that, then you know how much additional money you would want to make selling it yourself [to determine whether] it’s worth the pain points of doing that.”
Want more money-saving tips? Read Clark’s Car Selling Guide.
This post was last modified on June 20, 2023 10:35 am
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