#Off-lease

North America’s love affair with SUVs and crossovers arose so suddenly and with such passion that manufacturers were left scrambling to meet demand. Luxury brands certainly aren’t exempt from this but, unlike mainstream marquis, the sudden shift in product demand has thrown those marques a bit of a curveball.

Since prestige brands tend to possess substantially higher leasing rates than their more-affordable contemporaries, luxury automakers are getting stuck with off-lease sedans that nobody seems to want. While that’s terrible news for corporate accountants, it’s good news for anyone looking for a good deal on a used Lexus ES or Audi A4.

One- to three-year-old-vehicles are pouring back onto dealer lots, but the predicted drop in used vehicle prices hasn’t happened yet.

Consumer choices (meaning: trucks, trucks, trucks) and the high value of returning vehicles are keeping used prices near record levels, but analysts still expect a drop later this year, Automotive News reports.

The record-setting surge of new vehicle sales as America climbed out of the recession sparked a whole new kind of automotive competition.

A surge in off-lease vehicles returning to dealer lots means the certified pre-owned (CPO) market — once an unsexy afterthought — is now a battleground, and Kia Motors wants everyone to know how well it’s doing.

Currently, around 2.13 million cars will come off-lease by the end of 2014, up from 1.7 million last year. By 2016 and beyond, however, over 3 million vehicles annually will turn up on many a CPO and used car lot, replacing a long drought with an El Niño-esque flooding of the U.S. used car market.

New-vehicle sales are on the rise due not only to demand originally held back by the Great Recession, but by consumers coming off of their leases for their next latest and greatest.

The Great Recession has given us so much since it began five years ago with the fall of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual, from underwater mortgages and high unemployment, to bailouts of the financial and automotive manufacturing sectors and credit freezes.

Regarding the last item, a byproduct from said freeze will flood automakers with the potential to retain and steal customers when more and more leases draw to completion in the next year.