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 Kightlinger Auto Sales uses a system called Black Book to appraise all their vehicles to be sold to the public. Since its inception in 1955, Black Book has used “the Black Book methodology” to provide timely, independent, and accurate market data to the industry. The volatile used vehicle market has helped Black Book become the choice of most banks and dealers because of the accuracy of real-time data for people making buying decisions. “We switched to Black Book because the other books have been way off market too often due to the fact that they only rely on data feeds or auction reports. Black Book’s numbers are more accurate because their team is physically at the auction monitoring vehicles and their values,” said Brian Benstock of Paragon. Black Book physically attends more than 55 wholesale auctions each week. Since data feeds do not tell the whole story, Black Book has their professionals stand in the auction lanes to classify cars and account first-hand for anomalies and discrepancies. A human being can tell that a car’s market value was influenced by its salvage title, or by especially inclement weather that day, or by equipment not identified in the VIN. It’s not uncommon to see some vehicle’s values rapidly spike or decline in a single day in response to changing market conditions, like the surge in gasoline prices experienced last year. “Waiting a month or even a week to get this data is just too long and too costly,” said Benstock. “Black Book’s Daily electronic updates give our used car team the real time market information they need to buy and sell at the right value.” Monthly predictions and estimates have proven to be too risky in this volatile market and dealers and lending institutions want actual values based on intelligent real-time data because there is less room for error than ever before. For example, on Monday, June 8, 2009, Black Book editors adjusted the values on 10,036 vehicles in just one day. For more information feel free to visit www.blackbookusa.com |