CARY, N.C. -

More than 30 percent of new-vehicle retail sales year-to-date have been leases, helping to push numbers for a few automakers, according to Kelley Blue Book senior analyst Alec Gutierrez.

And while the short-term risks are marginal, there’s a bit of a slippery slope when leasing levels are this high, Gutierrez said during a conference call with the media on Wednesday.

“Again, at this stage, we don’t see a tremendous amount of downside risk in the short term, but as we talked about a little bit in last month’s call, as far as what dealers are paying at wholesale auctions where these off-lease vehicles have been returning in greater and greater numbers, we are seeing a 2-percent decline on late-model vehicles purchased at auction,” he said.

“And over time, as additional volume comes back from leasing, you’ll see more downward pressure on used-car values at these wholesale auctions, which puts downward pressure on residuals, which then makes leasing a more costly proposition for the manufacturer as they have to up incentive spend to off-set … potential continued declines in residual values,” Gutierrez said.

Edmunds.com director of industry analysis Jessica Caldwell said via Twitter on Wednesday that May marked the sixth straight month where leases represented 30 percent or more of new-car sales.

Edmunds provided Auto Remarketing a breakdown of the leasing rates in each of those six months, as follows:

  • December: 30.1 percent
  • January: 32.0 percent
  • February: 33.2 percent
  • March: 31.9 percent
  • April: 31.8 percent
  • May: 30.9 percent

According to Experian Automotive, 31.1 percent of all first-quarter new-car sales were leases, an all-time high. 

And that’s likely to grow.

Much of that growth is triggered by rising vehicle prices, Experian’s Melinda Zabritski said in a news release accompanying the company’s State of the Automotive Finance Market report.  

According to KBB, the average transaction price on a new vehicle in the US was $33,845 in May. This was down 0.3 percent from April but up 3.5 percent year-over-year.

 “The continued rise in new vehicle costs have kept many consumers exploring options to keep their monthly payments affordable,” said Zabritski, Experian’s senior director of automotive finance. “As long as vehicle prices continue to rise, we can expect leasing rates to grow along with them.

“However, consumers need to understand the nuances of their lease agreements and make sure that leasing fits their lifestyle,” she said.

As a side note, used-car leasing — a much smaller segment of the market — was up 2.1 percent year-over-year in Q1, Experian said.