Is the 2nd hand market dead?

[MTBRIDER1234]

2 hours ago, Shebeen said:

#metoo

 

half right, it was our mtbrider supply/demand expert that called me all those names. Jacko called me a bully, I called him nothing.

I just said I ain't an expert, but maybe you forgot that. Also I bet you aren't either. I called you those names, which was maybe was wrong, but neither of us were in the right.

I am not looking to continue this argument, as I believe nothing will be gained from carrying on.

[dave303e]

What are the bikehub's policies on web scraping? Asking for a friend...

 

For work I used to- let's say "gather"- property data from a few sources for a bit of a market comparison, we would also map it spatially and do a few other things with it. There were a few key things to consider, asking price, time on the market and then for property we would get sold price. It gives you a far better indicator of how the market is doing. When the time on the market stretches out and the differential between asking and selling grows you know the market is under pressure. This often is followed by a general drop in selling prices over time. It is a good indicator to wait before buying. When the selling time is quick and there is little differential between asking and sold price then it is a good idea to buy as the price tends to rise thereafter. Anyways it was not perfect but for what we used it for it was dead on. We could spot in demand areas and uplifting suburbs and make decisions for our actual work. Bikehub pay could potentially unlock the treasure trove, but I respect them for keeping it under wraps.

I think between energy costs and food costs we are in for a few rough months and luxury items such as fancy bicycles are dropping lower on many priority lists.

[Kom]

1 hour ago, Koos Likkewaan 2 said:

I need to offload a couple of bikes for various reason, but now is not the best time if I do not want to loose a lot of money and it might not be the right time going forward either.

List the bikes for an opinion?

I would not try sell a road bike rn, but gravel, MTB and even a kickr should do ok.

[The Ouzo]

21 minutes ago, dave303e said:

What are the bikehub's policies on web scraping? Asking for a friend...

 

For work I used to- let's say "gather"- property data from a few sources for a bit of a market comparison, we would also map it spatially and do a few other things with it. There were a few key things to consider, asking price, time on the market and then for property we would get sold price. It gives you a far better indicator of how the market is doing. When the time on the market stretches out and the differential between asking and selling grows you know the market is under pressure. This often is followed by a general drop in selling prices over time. It is a good indicator to wait before buying. When the selling time is quick and there is little differential between asking and sold price then it is a good idea to buy as the price tends to rise thereafter. Anyways it was not perfect but for what we used it for it was dead on. We could spot in demand areas and uplifting suburbs and make decisions for our actual work. Bikehub pay could potentially unlock the treasure trove, but I respect them for keeping it under wraps.

I think between energy costs and food costs we are in for a few rough months and luxury items such as fancy bicycles are dropping lower on many priority lists.

with property is probably easier as there are a number of dedicated property websites locally, plus access to things like deeds etc. where selling price is listed makes data gathering a little easier.

For bikes its rather adhoc. Bikehub can probably give a good indication of whats happening on this site, but for the rest I dont think there is any reliable uniform way of getting that data.

[eala]

Just for interest sake .Go on the site of THEPROSCLOSET in the USA .Their used bikes are substantially more expensive than ours .A year old used bike sells for maybe 5% less than a new one 

[Matt]

24 minutes ago, dave303e said:

What are the bikehub's policies on web scraping? Asking for a friend...

It's not something we allow or encourage, but I'd be happy to see how we can assist to get to those answers without needing to scrape.

Ideally, we need a solid sample of actual selling price vs. listing price (as you've alluded to and others have mentioned). Bike Hub Pay helps there in certain categories, but I'd love to have more complete data around that across more listings. We used to collect selling price (user reported) when marking as sold, but it wasn't widely used.

--

3.4. Virtual agents. You may not use any technology (including spiders, crawlers, bots, and similar virtual agents) to search or gain any information from this website, unless we have given you permission to do so.

https://help.bikehub.co.za/en/articles/4656777-terms-of-use

[dave303e]

2 minutes ago, The Ouzo said:

with property is probably easier as there are a number of dedicated property websites locally, plus access to things like deeds etc. where selling price is listed makes data gathering a little easier.

For bikes its rather adhoc. Bikehub can probably give a good indication of whats happening on this site, but for the rest I dont think there is any reliable uniform way of getting that data.

100% and bikehub pay would only have a sample of the sold prices as well. In terms of secondhand bikes I believe it may be the single biggest source in SA. FB marketplace may challenge but I think bikehub might have more especially higher end bikes.
Property is a million times easier, it also turns over slower and has the deed data to back it all up. But it comes back to seeing prices for sale are not sold prices. 

[Kom]

23 minutes ago, dave303e said:

What are the bikehub's policies on web scraping? Asking for a friend...

Not sure if you use Autotrader at all, but they recently (last couple of months) have added a fair price label to their ads.

Dont know how they derive these labels, assume it’s a combination of blue book value and their own sales data which gives you an idea of how cars are priced independent of the sellers asking price, quite risky if you ask me.

In the bicycle space, the value in this data is to as a buyer / seller potentially ensure you are both getting the right value, but oddly when I’ve presented data, for active ads on this platform, I’ve 9/10 attempts not managed to sway sellers to drop prices. “My price is my price, take it or leave it, I’m not in a hurry” type of answers.

My point is that with luxury goods, the combination of how small the ZA market is, and the general bullish nature of the segment of income earners that advertise here, granular data analysis would not easily present a trust worth conclusion beyond the very broad/blunt data that was presented by BikeHub earlier in this thread.

[Matt]

1 hour ago, eala said:

Just for interest sake .Go on the site of THEPROSCLOSET in the USA .Their used bikes are substantially more expensive than ours .A year old used bike sells for maybe 5% less than a new one 

A better comparison might be Pinkbike's buy & sell section which is a closer proxy to Bike Hub: https://www.pinkbike.com/buysell

As a reseller focussed on upper tier bikes (spec & condition) I'd expect TPC pricing to be higher than a typical private seller.

But even then 5% is VERY slim. They've been laying off staff quite aggressively this year, and their CEO recently stepped down. I suspect they grew fast in the covid boom with some venture capital backing, but now that growth has slumped.
 

[dave303e]

1 minute ago, Matt said:

It's not something we allow or encourage, but I'd be happy to see how we can assist to get to those answers without needing to scrape.

Ideally, we need a solid sample of actual selling price vs. listing price (as you've alluded to and others have mentioned). Bike Hub Pay helps there in certain categories, but I'd love to have more complete data around that across more listings. We used to collect selling price (user reported) when marking as sold, but it wasn't widely used.

--

3.4. Virtual agents. You may not use any technology (including spiders, crawlers, bots, and similar virtual agents) to search or gain any information from this website, unless we have given you permission to do so.

https://help.bikehub.co.za/en/articles/4656777-terms-of-use

Thanks for this, good to see you have it on the policy, a lot of sites forget about it, so well done. Don't worry I have no intention of scraping bikehub, just poking the bear because I can. I don't need to build a dashboard to see the market is under pressure. For interest when you do bikehub classifieds year in numbers. Can we get a graphic showing the value of an item vs the length of time listed. I think it will be interesting to see if there is a correlation

[The Ouzo]

3 minutes ago, Kom said:

Not sure if you use Autotrader at all, but they recently (last couple of months) have added a fair price label to their ads.

Dont know how they derive these labels, assume it’s a combination of blue book value and their own sales data which gives you an idea of how cars are priced independent of the sellers asking price, quite risky if you ask me.

In the bicycle space, the value in this data is to as a buyer / seller potentially ensure you are both getting the right value, but oddly when I’ve presented data, for active ads on this platform, I’ve 9/10 attempts not managed to sway sellers to drop prices. “My price is my price, take it or leave it, I’m not in a hurry” type of answers.

My point is that with luxury goods, the combination of how small the ZA market is, and the general bullish nature of the segment of income earners that advertise here, granular data analysis would not easily present a trust worth conclusion beyond the very broad/blunt data that was presented by BikeHub earlier in this thread.

Autotrader has many many years of historical data. Plus, when a dealer has sold a used vehicle, that data is reported to Transunion. This data is meant to feed through to the M&M Trade and Retail (i.e. book values) . Being Autotrader, I'm sure they have some sort of access to this data too.

And then at any given time there is normally a few cars that are the same age, make, model etc. that the data can be compared to.

[Matt]

4 minutes ago, Kom said:

Not sure if you use Autotrader at all, but they recently (last couple of months) have added a fair price label to their ads.

Dont know how they derive these labels, assume it’s a combination of blue book value and their own sales data which gives you an idea of how cars are priced independent of the sellers asking price, quite risky if you ask me.

In the bicycle space, the value in this data is to as a buyer / seller potentially ensure you are both getting the right value, but oddly when I’ve presented data, for active ads on this platform, I’ve 9/10 attempts not managed to sway sellers to drop prices. “My price is my price, take it or leave it, I’m not in a hurry” type of answers.

My point is that with luxury goods, the combination of how small the ZA market is, and the general bullish nature of the segment of income earners that advertise here, granular data analysis would not easily present a trust worth conclusion beyond the very broad/blunt data that was presented by BikeHub earlier in this thread.

We've toyed with the idea of doing something similar for a few years, but it's tricky. In the autos market you at least have book values etc. and less room for customisation. Bikes quickly become a minefield. 

In "ordinary market conditions" (if those exist?) I think we could automate the rough calculations Hubbers often share to approximate value. But there are perhaps too MANY variables to rely on a computer.

Bicycle Blue Book have a nicely put together value guide, but I've seen varying reviews of it's accuracy and usefulness.

https://www.bicyclebluebook.com/value-guide/ 

[The Ouzo]

2 minutes ago, Matt said:

We've toyed with the idea of doing something similar for a few years, but it's tricky. In the autos market you at least have book values etc. and less room for customisation. Bikes quickly become a minefield. 

In "ordinary market conditions" (if those exist?) I think we could automate the rough calculations Hubbers often share to approximate value. But there are perhaps too MANY variables to rely on a computer.

Bicycle Blue Book have a nicely put together value guide, but I've seen varying reviews of it's accuracy and usefulness.

https://www.bicyclebluebook.com/value-guide/ 

the problem with bicycles is that the frame (which is the major discription of the bike) only makes up a small % of the cost of it. Change the drive train from mechanical to electric and right away you've more than doubled the value of the bike.

Perhaps the right way to value bikes would be to do some sort of "Sum of the components" value calculator / database

[dave303e]

1 minute ago, The Ouzo said:

the problem with bicycles is that the frame (which is the major discription of the bike) only makes up a small % of the cost of it. Change the drive train from mechanical to electric and right away you've more than doubled the value of the bike.

Perhaps the right way to value bikes would be to do some sort of "Sum of the components" value calculator / database

The other night I saw pre orders for the new sram strong hanger AXS for like 60k for a crank, shifter, derailleur chain and cassette. I couldn't believe what people waste money on, I nearly chocked on my 18 year old Glenmorangie.

[Kom]

24 minutes ago, dave303e said:

The other night I saw pre orders for the new sram strong hanger AXS for like 60k for a crank, shifter, derailleur chain and cassette. I couldn't believe what people waste money on, I nearly chocked on my 18 year old Glenmorangie.

I’ve seen a couple of 1st Gen GX AXS upgrade kits for as little as R9,999 - still my pick for value.

Might be some time before the UDH version is seen on one of my bikes.

Edited May 12, 2023 by Kom

[Hypernorth]

2 hours ago, Brawler said:

The answer to all expensive bike problems is.. get an aggressive HT.

Agreed and I have one for sale if anyone is interested 😆