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What is going on in the UAE car market? What are the trends?
As the Founder & CEO of SellAnyCar.com, the Middle East’s first and largest car buyer, I would like to share some insights about the market with you.
Millions of people have used us, actually over 20% of the UAE population is registered with SellAnyCar.com. This way, we have been able to get a good overview of the market and its trends. While we all see the used car market growing compared to the stagnating and even shrinking new car market, we are not surprised about this development, as this is a sign of any developing automotive market. Within the next decade, the used car market will be 3 times bigger than the new car market. Another major trend we see is that consumers are fleeing the classifieds websites, which is an unmanaged marketplace experience. Consumers are using car buying experts to sell their cars to increase profits, maintain privacy and save time. 85% of players on classifieds are dealers (mostly disguised as consumers). Over 95% of our customers use SellAnyCar.com first, before trying anywhere else, as it is free and has a success rate exceeding 50% within 30 minutes. 100% receive an offer and a free car inspection report.
See the table below, why people are selling their cars. In 2018, close to 15% of consumers sold their cars for financial reasons. A number, which grew by 63% compared to 2016. The number of people, who were planning to purchase another car afterwards declined by 18%, while the people mentioning leaving the country as a reason increased by 25% in the same period. We see that there have been less transactions in the car market overall. We also believe that during the “good” times people had more cars than necessary and are disposing of them currently – a number which has grown by 16% since 2016.
Reasons for selling a car
2016
2017
2018
Total
Buying a new one
54.5%
46.7%
44.2%
49.9%
Do not want a car
2.2%
0.7%
0.0%
1.3%
Financial reasons
9.3%
13.4%
14.7%
11.7%
Moving
17.8%
19.9%
22.2%
19.3%
Having too many cars
15.8%
19.0%
18.3%
17.4%
Inherited
0.1%
0.0%
0.0%
0.1%
Unwanted gift
0.4%
0.3%
0.6%
0.4%
Source: SellAnyCar.com
On another note, we see that women are more and more confident of selling and buying their cars on their own, rather than leaving it up to male family members or friends. We believe that SellAnyCar.com has been a major driver of this development as it has removed the used car transaction hassles and introduced a convenient, fast and fair way of selling and buying cars in 17 malls throughout the country.
The percentage of women selling their cars on their own has grown by close to 50% since 2014, while it is still a male-dominated segment (83%).
People selling their cars
Gender
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
Female
11.71%
14.17%
16.99%
17.02%
17.45%
Male
88.29%
85.83%
83.01%
82.98%
82.55%
Source: SellAnyCar.com
Another interesting finding is that females own slightly younger cars and are selling them faster. While the average age of a car in the UAE is 6.86 years, males drive cars 6.92 years old and females 6.57 years old on average.
Average Car Age (Years)
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
Female
5.97
6.11
6.03
6.37
6.57
Male
7.40
6.40
6.52
6.63
6.92
Grand Total
7.23
6.36
6.43
6.58
6.86
Source: SellAnyCar.com
The UAE government has implemented stricter rules on imported cars and we can only support that decision. If you compare cars by specs, you will see that over 30% of cars with US/Canada specs in the UAE have had a chassis problem, while cars with GCC specs have significantly less chassis problems with only 3.6%. It clearly underlines bad practice of importers trying to hide major problems of US imported cars. This number has declined significantly since the UAE has implemented a thorough check at the borders beginning of 2016. The number has dropped by 34% within 2 years.
Chassis Issues
Specs
2015
2016
2017
European
7.03%
9.84%
4.55%
GCC
9.17%
5.57%
3.54%
Japan
20.31%
10.26%
6.03%
Other
13.47%
12.15%
6.25%
US/Canada
46.93%
37.32%
30.80%
Source: SellAnyCar.com
Given the above changes and learnings, GCC spec cars now make up over 91% of all cars in the UAE, grown by 22% since 2014.
Specs
2014
2015
2016
2017
GCC
74.69%
77.67%
90.53%
91.21%
Source: SellAnyCar.com
The most popular cars in the UAE are Japanese and the market share has grown to 41%, which is an increase of 25% since 2014. Among the 3 biggest car manufacturers, the biggest loser have been American cars with a loss of over 18%, followed by the German cars losing 11% market share since 2014. American cars make up 18%, German cars have 23% market share. There has also been a significant decrease in cars from other European manufacturers.
Manufacturer
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
American
22.53%
19.25%
19.71%
19.59%
18.39%
British
4.39%
3.58%
4.22%
4.18%
4.90%
German
26.16%
25.33%
26.07%
24.27%
23.20%
Japanese
32.65%
38.03%
37.59%
39.47%
40.81%
Korean
7.32%
7.89%
6.88%
7.40%
8.15%
Other European
6.91%
5.86%
5.23%
4.79%
4.19%
Other
0.03%
0.06%
0.30%
0.29%
0.37%
Source: SellAnyCar.com
Last but not least, we can testify the obvious: GCC nationals prefer white cars, followed by black and silver (and Oceanians agree), while the rest of the world prefers black cars, followed by white and silver.
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