IRVINE, Calif. -

Once final tallies are sorted, lease penetration figures for November are likely to shake out at a level similar to recent months, according to Kelley Blue Book senior analyst Alec Gutierrez, who said in a sales day conference call on Tuesday that leasing could end up with a share as high as 28 percent to 30 percent for the month.

And while that current lease penetration level isn’t cause for alarm, too much more escalation in leasing could put pressure on the used-car market.

“That’s pretty consistent with what we saw throughout the third quarter and (shows) the trend of increasing lease penetration rates that we’ve seen,” Gutierrez said, referring to the aforementioned prediction for November lease penetration.

“I wouldn’t say we’re at a point yet where the industry is at an unhealthy level of leasing, but I would argue that I don’t necessarily think it would be a good thing for us to continue to press much higher,” he said. “To me, it seems like if we’re at a 35 or a 40-percent lease penetration rate, that’s definitely too high; that’s a lot of risk we’re running as that sort of volume comes back on the back-end at wholesale auctions in a couple years.

“We already know that there’s going to be a pretty significant ramp-up in inventory hitting auctions in 2016 and 2017 related to just what was done this year at current rates,” Gutierrez added. “So, I would argue that we shouldn’t push too much higher, but we’re not quite at that point of no return just yet.”