Israel's Ministry of Transport and Road Safety today officially launched the "people's price list" for used cars based on reports from buyers and sellers in actual used vehicle deals. The price list is based on voluntary reporting by car owners, buyers and sellers, who have transferred ownerships of cars in the post office of over the Internet. Information given will remain anonymous with neither the license number of cars, names of buyers and sellers or details of specific deals revealed.
According to the Ministry of Transport, since it began gathering data six months ago, it has collected reports about tens of thousands of deals including the price of the deal, the type of car, the year it went onto the roads, type of gears (manual or automatic), size of the engine, number of kilometers that the car has travelled, the number and type of previous owners.
Officials at the Ministry of Transport and Road Safety's Traffic Administration, together with statistical consultants, have analyzed the data and compiled a list of the latest prices of used cars on the market.
The Ministry of Transport and Road Safety said, "The new price list is based on the latest real data. The price list should help contribute to lowering insurance premiums, which are currently priced according to a private price list, which does not faithfully reflect market prices. Purchasing a car is the second highest expenditure made by households in Israel after purchasing an apartment. Receiving accurate, up-to-date and accessible information about the real price of the car is a major consumer aim, which will contribute to a reliable, fair car market that gives better value to the consumer."
The car industry in Israel has received the new price list with skepticism, observing that ultimately the price of any given deal for this or that car is based on a consensus between buyers and sellers. If there will be major differences between the Ministry of Transport price list, these sources say, and the most popular price lists used by consumers, mainly Yad2 and Levi Itzhak, then this will only create confusion.
Car industry sources add that consensus about used car prices is to a great extend decided by institutional enterprises in the sector including insurance companies, trade-in departments of car importers and the sales departments of leasing companies. These sources say that it is hard to believe that these institutional enterprises will rely on a price list that they feel has 'holes' in the way the data is gathered.
According to the Ministry of Finance, close to 70% of the used vehicles sold over the past three years were by institutional enterprises, mainly leasing companies, who for the most part prefer not to report on the prices of their deals.
