TORONTO -

Thanks to a supply downturn — spurred by past years’ lagging new-vehicle purchases and leases — and other key factors, asking prices for used vehicles in Canada during the second quarter jumped more than 1.2 percent from the first quarter, according to autoTRADER.ca.

And for the majority of luxury models, the run-up in used prices was even more significant than that, analysts found. In fact, autoTRADER points to the BMW 3-series, whose used asking prices climbed 4.26 percent.

“In harnessing the autoTRADER.ca data, we can see that there are many factors that can affect the average residual values of used luxury vehicles, so we advise both buyers and sellers to do their research when entering the market to discover what the current going rate is for a particular type of model in their province,” explained Ian MacDonald, director of consumer marketing at TRADER Corp.

"We want to make sure that Canadians are making informed decisions on the value of the cars for sale in Canada they may be considering buying, instead of being blind-sided by a spike in price that may normalize or even lower a few months from now," he added. "The best way to do this is to scour and aggregate the market quickly using tools such as our ‘Value Finder’."

And, of course, not all luxury vehicle movements in the second quarter were the same.

The Audi A4, for instance, dropped 1.18 percent in terms of used asking prices compared to the first quarter, analysts noted. Likewise, the Mercedes-Benz SL500 showed a 3.9-percent drop