MMR vs. NADA Acquisition Strategies

The name of the game today is used inventory – everyone wants it, everyone needs it, and apparently everyone is valuing it a bit differently. Which means dealers might not get what they want or need if they don’t consider today’s widespread valuations among the go-to industry sources.

CarOffer has industry insights on demand, volume, and pricing across more than 1 million vehicles on its buy/sell/trade platform. That real-world data guides CarOffer dealer customers into setting up their preferences to keep their inventory automatically stocked and loaded. To set pricing, dealers also look at MMR and NADA Trade-In values and, in a normal market, all of the numbers hover around the same price. But this isn’t a normal market and the variance between MMR and NADA values caught us by surprise, and thought it would you, too.

When we looked at the numbers, we noticed an average 10% spread between MMR and NADA, with NADA Trade-In Clean being as much as 10% lower than wholesale market prices. Why does this matter? Because this variance hurts your chances to buy the cars you need, especially if you are using NADA Clean or Average Trade Values.

CarOffer analysts looked at MMR vs. NADA on 5 different late-model vehicles, as well as some typical pricing strategies made in relation to MMR and NADA. Here’s what we saw:

There is no doubt the demand for used is clear and present; but to meet that demand dealers need to be strategic about their inventory management, whether through auctions or a platform like CarOffer. Let us help you stay on top of your lot. Give us a call or email us to explore how you’re sourcing vehicles.