Things ARE changing in the used values area today. Over the past few years, we've been seeing price drops across the board (that's even why HD is having the earnings issues you've seen in the press and biker blogs lately). In some cases, this could simply be just the effect of services like eBay growing in popularity among used motorcycle hunters (for tips on buying & selling your motorcycle on eBay - see this article), but I think there’s something more to the picture here.
I think I read somewhere that a study was recently conducted, and the average age of a Harley Davidson rider was 42 yrs. I come in a little lower than that (about a decade lower), but I have to admit that it basically jives with my experience. I'm usually one of the youngest, if not THE youngest HD guy on local group rides. Most of the riders my age and younger are going for crotch rockets (an opportunity to grow Buell, but not such a good trend for Harley’s cash cows, or “cash pigs” so to speak, the cruisers).
Doing the math on that average age situation kinda shows where things lie on future resale value. The used and new Harley Davidson market is actually a LOT like the US housing market - both of which saw a record breaking run-up in prices & demand over the past 20 years. Remember what it was like in the pre-Evo early 80s? Harley Davidson itself looked like it was going to be bankrupt in just a few years, and used Harley values were really low. For the most part, at that time the only people buying Harleys were the die hard guys like my uncle, who could do most of the maintenance and repair work themselves. (Happily, Harley’s bikes no longer require that kind of maintenance.)
But today’s Harley market has become seriously flooded with bikes, and it will only get more-so in the next decade or two, as the average rider gets older, and they decide that they need the $ for things like:
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*Retirement
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*The RUBs (Rich Urban Bikers) decide their mid-life crisis is over, or they simply move on to the next fad - for instance, the classic car market is really taking off while the Harley market stagnates... Maybe just a coincidence, and yet maybe not...
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*People need a few grand to take care of other things, and are forced to put the bike up for sale because their homes have lost so much value
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* It is time to pay off some of the kids' college loans... etc. etc.
Harley sees this themselves too, and that's why they're pushing so hard to get into overseas markets like India. They NEED to get into new markets, because North America is set to stagnate and drop. (Update 1/25/08: Guess I was right! Wow!)
Many areas of the country are already reporting falling values for new and used Harleys, so this trend may already be upon us.
If you live in one of the areas with falling prices, sites like eBay, or CycleTrader, or Walneck’s Classic Cycle Trader might be your best bet.
