Used Car Price Trends 2025–2026: 14 Months of Asking Prices

We tracked the asking prices of a fixed basket of vehicles — the same models, same model years — every month from June 2025 through August 2026. The basket’s median price fell 7.5% over those 14 months, but the average hides a dramatic split: some vehicles lost a quarter of their asking price while genuinely used trucks actually got more expensive.

The index, month by month

*August 2026 is a partial month (snapshot taken August 4).

The decline is not a straight line. Prices held flat through the summer of 2025, slid through the fall and early winter, then — notably — stopped falling entirely from February through April 2026 before taking their single largest step down in May. We look at that spring plateau in detail in our companion study on the best time of year to buy.

What fell hardest — and what went up

The biggest losers are all 2025 model-year vehicles — this is the model-year clearance effect in action. As 2026 stock arrived, a 2025 Mustang Mach-E went from a $50,627 median ask to $38,295, and a 2025 Ford F-150 shed more than $9,600 of asking price.

At the other end, three series in our basket rose over the same period: the 2026 Ram 1500 (+6.5%), the 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9 (+9.8%), and — most striking — the three-year-old 2023 Ford F-150, whose median ask climbed +10.4% (from $37,996 to $41,966). Late-model used trucks were a seller’s market for most of the tracked period.

What this means if you’re buying

• The outgoing model year is the deal. A “new-ish” 2025 vehicle bought during 2026-stock season carries a 15–24% discount against where it was priced a year earlier.
• Used trucks don’t follow the script. If you are waiting for a used F-150 to get cheaper, the last 14 months went the other way.
• Timing matters less than model choice — the spread between the best and worst series in our basket (35 percentage points) dwarfs the seasonal swings (about 3 points).

Methodology notes

The basket contains the 31 (make, model, model-year) series that had at least 50 tracked VINs in every one of the 15 months from June 2025 to August 2026 — mostly high-volume 2025 model-year vehicles, plus several 2023–2026 series. The index is the median of each series’ price relative to its own June 2025 level, so no single expensive model dominates. Because the basket follows fixed model years as they age, it blends market movement with one year of aging — which is exactly what a shopper comparing “the same car, a year later” experiences. Medians throughout. See how we build these studies.