do trade in values on recent good cond. low hr tractors go up as well, or do dealers skim the profit?
I think ALL dealers are in business to make a profit. That's just one of the basic functions of Business. Do ALL dealers operate the same? No, some want more profit than others and some need some money some days and NEED to sell something to get some cash, sort of like any and ALL businesses.
Lets say you pay $15000 for a tractor. Five years later that model tractor new sells for $18000 and ten years later it sells for $20000. How much are you or a dealer going to be able to sell that tractor for? Probably not $15000 but maybe not far below that figure. Question of used tractor prices going up: Probably won't go up but probably won't drop so much so in fact the price did not go up but didn't go down as much so sort of like going up. There are many people here that have bought tractors years ago and sold them later for close to what they paid for them.
Do we all want the price of tractors to go up each year? YES for those of us that have already bought our tractors, NO for you guys that are still waiting for prices to drop or why ever your waiting.
Actually it doesn't matter much if prices go up for us owners. If we decide to trade and get a different model years later our used well cared for tractor VALUES have gone up so the jump in price hasn't hurt us as bad plus we been using our tractors and saving our backs plus bucks not paid to others for doing work for us.
What does this all mean? It means you need to go TODAY and buy a tractor if you think you need/want one and can afford it. It's comparable to people waiting on land prices to drop before they buy (most of them are still renting today) or waiting till they get a big raise before buying and the price of land has gone up more than their raise. Look at your income and expenses and determine what you'd rather have. A tractor or more beer/golf/gambling/women/car/truck/land/etc?
I've bought 13 Kubotas from Barlows in the past 9 years. I've got 5 now and sold one to another person. The math will show how many I traded back to Barlows who gave me what I thought was a fair price for trade in. If you want to trade then contact your dealer or Barlows and see how much the difference is and you decide if they are giving you a fair trade in value.
