So today a friend tells me Kazoo and WBAC have been offering much higher prices than dealers for used cars and then stock piling them. He reckons you can see the giant car lots on Google Earth.
This seems completely counter to their business model and I can’t find any evidence of this online.
Have I missed something?

Well Google earth isn’t live for starters.

My house showed my previous owners caravan up until recently and I’ve been here over a decade.

My house showed my previous owners caravan up until recently and I’ve been here over a decade.

*goes off to see if red neck garden is on google earth

goes off to see if red neck garden is on google earth

It is….sofa and all ..

But Street view still shows the previous owner….. Guess Google sensored my version of the garden

Well Google earth isn’t live for starters.

Several years old in most cases.

Most of the huge stacks of cars, near the ports, are new ones fresh off the ferries waiting to be distributed to dealers.

Google Street View can be ten years out of date but Google earth is rarely less than 12 months old – you can get more up to date imagery but you have to pay!

Here’s a BCA (who owns WBAC) storage area & they’ve got loads more.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4310957,0.7425753,1662m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e1

Have I missed something?

Evidence?

It’s nothing new, those car storage areas will have all sorts of vehicles there for different reasons.

BCA collect people’s lease cars when the leases come to an end, then the vehicles will need to be processed and then sent to auction, cars have to sit somewhere between auctions and processing.

Wbac are still paying top money for cars atm.

recently had a quote of WBAC on the wifes auto toyota aygo and was properly shocked to see they offered us over 1k more than we bought it for 3 years ago !!
Understand they will knock us down etc , but still , thats not bad … Just waiting for the new car to turn up and then off it goes 🙂

I work on the Isle of Sheppey- lots of sites here for unloading & storing new cars. If you look on google, most are full but they were pretty empty when I was in the office Tuesday.

I’d always assumed they just parked them all on the streets around Phillip Scholfields house

I think the thing with high prices is simply that used prices are high because new cars are in short supply due to chip shortage.

As I suspected this sounds like a none-story.
Didn’t know Google earth was so dated though.

We buy any van offered me £300 more for my van than i paid for it 16 months ago . With 15k on the clock.
Bonkers

I paid 20k for a car last July and sold it a month ago to WBAC for nearly 23k. According to the tracking app which I’m still connected to the car was moved to an industrial estate near Banbury and hasn’t moved since.

So from my experience, yes they’re both paying high prices for cars and they’re not in a hurry to sell them.

Blimey my van has lost only £2k in 3 years and 45,000 miles! Hmm, 🤔 *ponders electric van leases.

Google earth is rarely less than 12 months old

Over 3 years old at my folks house, 2 years for central Glasgow and Clermiston (Edinburgh) last updated 2016.

Guess it depends where you are.

They offered my girlfriend a good bit more than the local Ford delaer for her 10 year old tatty Corsa. £1800 with WBAC and £1300 at the dealer. Dealer matched in the end.

I’ll ask my Aunt, she owns part of Sheerness Dockyard 😉

Never mind cars, where are all the flipping vans?

I’ll ask my Aunt, she owns part of Sheerness Dockyard

Best humblebrag EVER.

I’ll ask my Aunt, she owns part of Sheerness Dockyard 😉

If it’s the bit in between the high and low tide marks, we need to start being a bit more deferential to Benji.

My car is worth £100 less than it was the last time I had it valued (about 6 months ago).

But it is a 14 year old banger.

My Focus only owes me £1500 after 3 year of driving and 30k miles. Thats the Cazoo price, if I sold it privately i’d probably break even.

Its a false economy though, because any car I bought to replace it will have gone up too.

Have I missed something?

Yep, a kazoo can’t stockpile anything except spit

This seems completely counter to their business model

it wouldn’t be if they were certain that the value of used cars was going to continue to rise. Buy an asset “cheaply” when you can (which might still mean paying more for it than others would) and hold it till the demand rises so you can charge a higher price. Even better if the “world” gets to know that WBAC offer far better prices than dealers – this feeds the incoming supply, and in fact means the dealers have less of their own supply pushing up the auction price! You need plenty of cash and patience to play that game (and probably enough market insight on when to sell – but I suspect through the auctions and their website they’ll have a very good idea when to sell). In fact you possibly don’t apply this philosophy on all vehicles the same – if you have enough granular data on different models then why auction say all your Honda CRV’s the same week – that dilutes the value; drip feed one a week so people are fighting over them…

Speaking to somebody in the second hand trade, their margins on cars from auction have been squeezed. End of lease cars are going straight to businesses like Cazoo, so there aren’t as many cars going to auction. He was also nervous about holding too many cars at inflated prices, fearing a drop in prices.

Here’s a BCA (who owns WBAC) storage area & they’ve got loads more.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4310957,0.7425753,1662m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e1

That’s interesting. The next-door Tesco Superstore carpark looks minuscule by comparison! I also appreciate that they’ve spelled out ‘NH-‘ presumably to be visible on aerial imaging. WHAT DOES IT MEAN THOUGH?

Just zoomed into that Google Maps link has this is just wrong – someone needs to have a word!… 🙂

WHAT DOES IT MEAN THOUGH?

It means Neil Harris had some time on his hands and fancied seeing his initials in cars when he looked on Google maps 🙂

Doesn’t seem likely to me.

Stock is hard to come by at the moment, but the auctions are still busy (client owns a couple of Car Supermarket type outlets) and prices are high because of it.

When I worked at Lombard Vehicle Finance / RBS we disposed of all of our returns via BCA, the commercial arm of WBAC, their storage facilities are vast but so is the throughput.

That said, I get the ‘theory’. High demand for used cars means higher prices so it’s easy to think that it would be worth stockpiling thousands of cars hoping for the price to rise, the problem with that is the sheer amount of money involved. BCA’s 2020 accounts show they hold no cash, or cash like assets (aka no money in the bank), they had around £5m worth of inventory that they owned (probably stock from WBAC) and £248m worth of trade so I guess they don’t ‘own’ many of the cars they sell. They also had £147m of credit to pay in the following 12 months.

Even if values of used cars continue to rise, individual cars are still likely to be depreciating assets, I.E. a 5 year old car, becomes less valuable when it turns into a 6 year old car, even if the value of 6 year old cars rise slightly and with all their stock financed with credit, the quicker they can move stock on, the better and more profitable.

This might just work out good timing for me. On the strength of this thread I checked my car and it’s an unbelievably high offer. I run it as a car for work, claiming the allowance to pay the loan on it. Work have just issued the new car list and they have hybrids on there, which look very good from a BIK position. So I’m very much thinking now, sell the car, pay the loan off and pocket the equity I didn’t think I would have. The only spanner in that particular plan is if the new cars are OOS or super long lead times as mine will be depreciating more (finance balance decreasing though) and maybe these sky high offers are short term.

Just zoomed into that Google Maps link has this is just wrong – someone needs to have a word!… 🙂

That has me itching….!

The only spanner in that particular plan is if the new cars are OOS or super long lead times as mine will be depreciating more (finance balance decreasing though) and maybe these sky high offers are short term.

it is highly likely that there will be long lead times for any new car – this is why second hand price are high right now.

The lady wife works for British Car Auctions in their recruitment/HR dept.

Based on what she has told me there is a massive shortage of 2nd hand cars at the moment, hence the inflated prices, i forget what the metric is called but pre Covid it was at 80% and now it’s at 110% average sell price or something.  It’s completely daft and unsustainable but if you have a car you don’t use, now would be the time to sell it.

Kazoo are buying the stuff not good enough for BCA’s own Online Consumer Facing Brand Cinch.  You know the one that appears to be keeping Rylen in fake tan.

They also have about 1800 (yes, really) jobs to fill as they are in the midst of expanding/changing business models (Dealers going to Auction Houses -> Basically Online Only) and a source of skilled labour just to the East has dried up…

Just zoomed into that Google Maps link has this is just wrong – someone needs to have a word!…

I wish I hadn’t looked at that

Why would anyone do that? WHY?!!!

they had around £5m worth of inventory that they owned (probably stock from WBAC) and £248m worth of trade so I guess they don’t ‘own’ many of the cars they sell.

My understanding is that they don’t own any of the cars, they are just a service provider.

That said, I get the ‘theory’. High demand for used cars means higher prices so it’s easy to think that it would be worth stockpiling thousands of cars hoping for the price to rise, the problem with that is the sheer amount of money involved. BCA’s 2020 accounts show they hold no cash, or cash like assets (aka no money in the bank), they had around £5m worth of inventory that they owned (probably stock from WBAC) and £248m worth of trade so I guess they don’t ‘own’ many of the cars they sell. They also had £147m of credit to pay in the following 12 months.

Even if values of used cars continue to rise, individual cars are still likely to be depreciating assets, I.E. a 5 year old car, becomes less valuable when it turns into a 6 year old car, even if the value of 6 year old cars rise slightly and with all their stock financed with credit, the quicker they can move stock on, the better and more profitable.

Now I’m intrigued as to how the finances work, if the whole business is operated on credit, and therefore the vehicles are just assets… Is someone (a lender) just tying up cash in a growing stockpile of used cars to try and insulate it from tax?

Who supplies their credit?

I thought dealers should generally send trade ins to auction anyway so are WBAC just cutting out the middle man and hence can offer a higher price.

I’m not far from a huge BCA storage site but the signage seems to suggest people buying pick up from there too.

We sold our car to WBAC this afternoon. They emailed me saying the valuation had increased, so I looked into it and it had increased by about £3k since a couple of weeks earlier. I took it along, fully expecting to be smashed down by a fair chunk, but no, they paid pretty much what they’d offered. Saving me a trip to the bodywork guy for touching up and a load of hassle, and it was some way above what I’d anticipated getting privately. Possibly could have held out for more but I’m very happy to take it. What a weird market currently.

The WBAC guy was describing how vast the set-up is. Incredible really. He has return customers, buying themselves Porsches and stuff, deciding after a few weeks that they don’t like them, and chopping them in to WBAC.

I think I got lucky with the algorithms ultimately, but it’s a pretty straightforward way to sell the car. I’d be really interested to know what they get for mine when they do shift it on.

That’s interesting. The next-door Tesco Superstore carpark looks minuscule by comparison! I also appreciate that they’ve spelled out ‘NH-‘ presumably to be visible on aerial imaging. WHAT DOES IT MEAN THOUGH?

NHS……Work in progress?

Don’t run like most UK businesses…

In Cazoo’s case subsidised by VC money through to going public on US market via SPAC. More than happy to play long game with ridiculous amounts of capital behind them. In terms of long game and scale think of Amazon running at loss to drive up growth and kill off competition over 20yrs. More money, tech data and better team than any similar co from back in the day. Their founder was behind what is now Amazon Prime and Zoopla. If they are holding cars their is a good financial benefit for them to do so. My guess would be maybe all the supply chain issues we are experiencing are going to last another 3yrs rather than 6 months or simply they are not doing so at all, just operating at scale beyond what people are used to seeing.