Understanding the historical pricing trends of vehicles is at the heart of an accurate, well-optimized inventory valuation. Whether you’re an automotive dealer, auction house, or private seller, knowing how to read and analyze past market behavior can help you better understand current market trends while seeing how vehicle prices have risen and fallen over time.
Inventory Valuation: Then and Now
In the past, handling inventory valuation based on historical prices was a cumbersome and logistical nightmare. Data sources were limited, and market trends were general at best. Many dealerships relied on pure staff intuition and knowledge of the local market to set prices. Although seasoned automotive professionals could make reasonable assessments, the method wasn’t always accurate, leading to inconsistent pricing.
Auction houses would use their historical sales data from past auctions as well as their understanding of market demand. Printed resources like the Kelley Blue Book and NADA guides were often used, but these resources were typically only updated a few times a year and certainly didn’t reflect current market conditions The Black Book, which offered wholesale values to dealerships, was also updated sparingly.
Enter MarketCheck’s Historical Price API
Thankfully, businesses no longer have to rely on your most veteran salesperson or historical auction data to get relevant pricing and inventory valuation information. MarketCheck’s Historical Price API puts this valuable information within the reach of dealers, auction houses, and private sellers.
Where Does the Information Come From?
The data used in MarketCheck’s Historical Price API comes from a variety of sources over time, including dealer websites, private party listings, and auction sites. We currently scan over 84,000 listings to get the most up-to-the-minute information and coverage.
How MarketCheck’s Historical Price API Works
Here are just a few of the many ways that today’s dealerships and automotive professionals can take advantage of MarketCheck’s Historical Price API:
- See historical pricing data for specific vehicles across different time periods, allowing for in-depth sales trend analysis
- Access historical pricing data tied to a specific VIN, with detailed insights into how prices have changed for specific vehicles
- See broader market trends by aggregating historical price data across similar vehicles, regions, or timeframes.
- Conduct a comparative analysis and compare the prices of different vehicles (or the same vehicle) across various markets to pinpoint the best pricing strategies.
How MarketCheck’s Historical Price API Optimizes Inventory Valuation
MarketCheck’s powerful historical price API offers automotive businesses a number of significant advantages when it comes to properly valuing and pricing inventory. These include:
Trend Analysis
Unlock patterns that can cause prices to rise and fall by analyzing trends from the Historical Price API. How do seasonal fluctuations, economic factors, or new model releases affect current inventory? With MarketCheck’s Historical Pricing API, businesses can now know with confidence and stay one step ahead of the market with more accurate future pricing predictions.
Improved Price Optimization
Historical price data helps dealers and sellers alike to optimize their pricing strategies. By looking at historical highs and lows of vehicle prices, they can set prices designed to maximize profit while remaining competitive. For instance, if a vehicle’s price typically drops in the winter, a dealer might decide to sell off their inventory before the seasonal dip or adjust their pricing strategies accordingly.
Accurate Inventory Valuation
Overpricing inventory leads to vehicles sitting on the lot while underpricing results in lost revenues. The MarketCheck Historical Price API offers the data needed to ensure that vehicles are valued in line with current market conditions and historical trends.
Market Comparisons
With MarketCheck’s Historical Price API, dealers and sellers can now compare the pricing trends of vehicles across different markets. This feature is especially useful for dealerships with locations in multiple areas or businesses looking to expand into new markets.
Sales Team Support
Today’s customers are incredibly well-read and savvy when it comes to doing their automotive research before buying a vehicle. If a customer questions why a certain make or model is priced higher than similar models, the sales team can use historical pricing details to justify the price decision to customers. By showing historical data and how the current price reflects market trends, the team stays aligned with the vehicle’s value, and the customer better understands the specific price point.
Getting Started with MarketCheck’s APIs
Historical price data is just one of the many different types of APIs available through MarketCheck. With searchable details right down to the specifics of the vehicle, including timeframes, regions, and more across the U.S. and Canada, it’s now possible for dealers, private sellers, auction houses, or other automotive professionals to have the latest data at their fingertips.
For those automotive businesses that would like to integrate this data into their web apps or mobile sites, to those who simply need a one-off report, MarketCheck’s valuable data services are ready to assist. Our intelligent APIs allow access to this data just by adding a few lines of code. Data feeds are also available for those automotive businesses who need a specific format or who want regular data according to a specific schedule.
Customized one-off reports can also be created to meet specific requirements,.
Why Use MarketCheck’s Automotive Data?
By concentrating on specific industries with a laser-like focus, we’re able to provide in-depth search and retrieval capabilities well beyond what’s available through standard search engine technology like Google.
This data is then made accessible and affordable to the larger developer community in order to make markets more easily accessible to their target audience. For dealerships, this means unprecedented access to the information needed to power in-depth research and analysis into pricing trends, historical details, regional variations, and much more.
We invite you to learn more or browse our API documentation to discover the depth of information available and contact us if you have any questions or would like to inquire about leveraging our data for a specific use case.
