According to Lucky Lopez (Car Dealer), repos were up to 20,000/day in July, up from 17,000/day at the start of 2023. He talks about how loosened credit requirements in the 2021 stimulus era, and the fact people overpaid for cars, having now huge negative equity in their used cars is what is causing this spike.
This could mean 4-5m repos annually, only including business days.
He says this repo data comes from what financial institutions disclosed them, but there are other smaller lenders that don’t do it, and repos could be even higher.
Other dealers have stated similar experiences in their auctions
Cox is also predicting a similar 25% increase in repos but for a smaller volume 1.5m (As reference, 1.75m was the high in 2009, according to them)
However, I have difficulty trusting Cox data because I have seen a lot of criticism about their transparency of the true state of the market because of their interests. So If I have to chose who to follow more, I choose the car dealers showing the reality in the auctions
- As for subprime borrowers, 17% of the total is currently subprime.
As a reference subprime mortgages were only aproxx. 13% back in 2008.
Total auto loans currently are at 107m.
Household Debt and Credit: US - InvestmentWiki