Do you think this is a transient phenomenon Fox, or has there been a shift in used car prices?
Some of it is absolutely lifecycle based. When a car is new, used versions of it are expensive. When I bought my first F10 in 2014 I bought a 2010 530d SE for £20k which makes the G30 you've found seem not exactly outrageous, especially when you consider I did this because a 2010 M Sport was at least £24k at the time. But the F10 was mid life, a year after its facelift at that point. Pretty much exactly where the G30 is now on its model lifecycle.
My next F10 I bought in 2016 - a year old - for not much more than that G30 is up for. But this was a year before the eventual replacement of the F10 with the G30 and towards the end of its life. So this absolutely will play a part in values.
I appreciate you don’t have a crystal ball, but is there not a degree of anchoring here? It used to cost less, so now it’s expensive? Surely the market values are the market values...I’ve had an auto trader search for these for about 6 months (and m340i - which don’t seem to be getting any cheaper, in fact gone up on average in that period) and this is the best deal I’ve seen in terms of price/spec. The next point is - it’s clearly not been sold in 2 months on the forecourt, how flexible do AUC tend to be on price?
The difficult thing here is trying to convey what I mean. I don't think this car is an overpriced example - that is, you can't go and buy one just as good for £20k. So, if you absolutely want a 4 year old G30 then this one is about as good an example as you'll find for the money.
But I just think that 4 year old BMW's seem to represent poor value for money having done it before myself. When I came to replace my SE with an M Sport I initially wanted a 3-4 year old example for around £20-23k but it just seemed like such poor value given how much I was eventually able to get a 12 month old car for. In terms of total ownership costs, I doubt it really ended up costing me much more overall.
I've just jumped on to the AUC site to find something to show you what I mean. I appreciate this isn't quite the same spec and is missing the Icon LED lights but I'm sure one would pop up with these and it isn't going to double the price. Here is a 9 month old AUC 530d with just 5k miles on it for under £30k:
https://usedcars.bmw.co.uk/vehicle/202009153758778?quoteref=f3f84379-1c76-4d9b-8fe8-0ef7150b7bbc
To spend another 3-4k to end up moving from a 4 year old car to a 9 month old one to me seems like a sensible thing to do if you can raise the extra cash. In real terms thats probably even cheaper than my F10 was.
Lets do some man maths on it.
4 year old car is 25k. 9 month old car is £29k, so you've got a 4k difference.
If like me you want to maintain warranty then after 1 year on the 25k car you're paying £1k a year. Whereas you've got a full extra year and 3 months warranty on the 9 month old one, saving you about £1250. So now the difference is £2750.
Is the 20 plate car going to be worth £2750 more than the 17 plate car in 3 years time?
I'd be amazed if it wasn't. So by spending that little more you've effectively ended up in a virtually brand new car for no extra overall cost.