Autorola UK believes that within the next five years online buying and selling of used vehicles will comprise around 30-35% of the market, which spells change for the established UK remarketing industry. Buyer confidence continues to build in buying vehicles online and Autorola’s buyer base expands daily to view around 6,000 vehicles that the UK has for sale on its online platform.

More buyers are also seeing that online represents a good use of their time as they can buy vehicles from three or four locations all from the comfort of their own office.

The UK has been a predominantly physical auction market for decades and as things are showing signs of change, so online and physical are beginning to work alongside one another.

”We don’t see the death of physical auctions in the short term as they are very well established in the UK, what we see is more vehicles being bought and sold online when physical doesn’t provide the right remarketing solution”, said Jon Mitchell, Autorola UK’s sales director.

”We are now selling vehicles online for a leasing company that don’t sell first time at auction. The car remains on site at the physical auction – we simply load it onto our platform to offer to a completely new set of buyers that are based all over the country. There will be more of this type of solution being adopted by vendors as they continue to focus on converting their vehicles into cash quickly and efficiently”, he continues.

Some other vendors are using the Autorola Branded Sites proposition which gives vendors an online presence to sell their used vehicles using their own logos and branding, but which links into Autorola’s online platform and to its buyer network.

”Some fleets offload 100 identical vans simultaneously. Spreading the volume should mean they see better prices and open up stock to new buyers. It also opens up their stock to buyers 24/7 which doesn’t happen in a physical auction environment,” added Mitchell. Autorola UK has seen a 40% growth in 2012 and it expects the same level in 2013 with 10 more staff being added to their team.

Reports from UK auction house BCA suggest that used car auction prices have continued to rise. The company reports that across sectors, used car average prices reached £6,481 (€8,046), a 2.6% increase over prices in September and an 8.6% rise over 2011, even though cars were on average older and with higher mileage. BCA’s October figure is the highest since reporting began in 2005 and as the company points out, it is largely the result of the continuing shortage of good, retail quality stock.

Across BCA’s sectors, average fleet and lease prices rose by 0.4% in October compared with September prices. BCA says this is the sixth consecutive monthly rise. For the year, fleet and lease prices have risen by an average of 14.9%. BCA data shows that the average age of cars in its auction halls has risen from 59.7 months to 62.2 months, while average distance covered has increased from 92,283km to 94,473km.