A decline in budget models has forced some buyers to turn to used cars or hold onto their older vehicles longer, with the average age of cars on the road now topping a dozen years, according to researcher S&P Global. A rising number of Americans are trading in vehicles worth less than what they owe, the latest sign of stress in the automotive industry. Most Read from Bloomberg Just over 28% of trade-ins toward new-car purchases carried negative equity, the highest level since the first quarter of 2021, a ...

More Americans are trading in underwater vehicles. That does not mean the vehicles are submerged. In a sense, the drivers are. More than one in four trade-ins had negative equity in the third quarter of 2025, Edmunds reports. In auto industry parlance, the loans were underwater. Of all used vehicles traded in toward a new car purchase between July and September, 28.1% had negative equity. That means the vehicles were worth less than the owner owed on a car loan. The figure marks a four-year high. Amer ...

`` A growing number of car owners are finding themselves underwater on their auto loans, according to new data from the auto shopping website Edmunds.com. In short, that means what they owe is larger than what the cars are actually worth. `` `` Most Read from Fast Company `` `` `````` Edmunds reported that underwater trade-ins are at their highest record since the first quarter of 2021, during the pandemic, when 31.9% of new-car trade-ins were upside down. `` `` The latest data from Edmunds for the second q ...