The Blubber

Per Bloomberg

Aside from real estate, Americans are also struggling to purchase cars as new data has revealed that the average prices for new vehicles have increased 30% since pre-pandemic 2019 levels, per JPMorgan. Now, a new vehicle's average price will cost US buyers almost $50,000.

The average new-car payment in the US has increased by around $400 monthly for the last decade. Cox's chief economist Jonathan Smoke that payments remained at an affordable level but passed that mark in November 2019.

It was noted that since then, the prices of new cars have continued to increase. Although prices have slightly declined in recent weeks as production has improved, average new car prices have not yet reached affordable levels.

Cox data revealed a used car's average price is around $27,000. Even the sales of automakers dropped from their 2021 levels, selling around 13 million vehicles last year, at an 8% decline from the year before.

Despite this, Ford and GM reportedly remained profitable, with Ford seeing a 4.4% rise in gross profit year-over-year. GM earnings reached $14.5 billion after a $200 million increase.

Mary Barra, the CEO of GM, gave a statement to investors in 2022 regarding how they won't return to previous inventory levels. Normally, automakers had 60 to 100 days of inventory, but lately, manufacturers targeted just around half.

Barra: “We’ll never go back to the inventory levels that we were at in the past,”

A recent Reuters poll of analysts found that the US housing market won't see a crash like in 2008. Analysts are expecting US home prices to drop by 4.5% this year, which represents a 10% drop from its overall peak.

Amazon has recently launched a program in partnership with Better.com to help employees buy homes. Employees could reportedly use their equity vested as collateral to get a downpayment on a home.

See flow at unusualwhales.com/flow.

Other News:

• The US housing market isn't going to see a 2008-sized crash
• Amazon employees get the option to use stock as equity to finance homes with Better.com

Resources:

Bloomberg