LATEST research from the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria (RACV) has found the vast majority of members are investing more in domestic travel, and Paul Nobes, owner of Swan Hill Automotive Group, has seen healthy sales for second-hand vehicles.
Mr Nobes said this had been a trend since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the market spiking before settling.
“It is the first time in 30 years, that I have seen, where demand is outweighing supply – there’s more buyers than cars,” he said.
“When COVID first started, we found that people didn’t want to use public transportation, and it was difficult to source new vehicles due to the inability to find semiconductors, which meant that there was a simple formula behind a sharper demand for second-hand vehicles.”
Semiconductors are necessary computer chips for vehicles.
“The market has balanced out a bit now, but certainly in the middle of 2020 we found that the supply of new cars were down, and government cars and rental cars were no longer entering the used-car market, companies wanted to keep them,” Mr Nobes said.
“The market has certainly stabilised in terms of price and demand, but we are still seeing a high volume of sales for all kinds of used cars across the board.”
Mr Nobes said this was because many customers were still keen on spending money on vehicles rather than overseas travel.
According to RACV, 93 per cent of members said “the risk of disruption, cancellation or having to quarantine meant it’s not worth the stress or hassle of booking trips away”.
