Your Competitive Set Is Lying About Price to Market

Why does your competitive set say 98% of market when you're really at 102%?

Your pricing tool compares your fee-less price to competitors' prices that already have $699 and $999 fees baked in. Then it hands you a competitive set where half the "XLs" are Platinums. Jasen Rice pulls up the live data and shows why the number you price off of is skewed, and what to look at instead.

Five things to check before you trust that percentage.

The comp set includes their fees, not yours. A competitor listed at 25,900 shows up in the data as 26,694 because of a $699 fee. Your 25,500 is being compared to that number without your own fee added.

A $999 fee moved one dealer from 98% to 102%. Add the fee and 25,500 becomes 26,499. Being a grand cheaper than a competitor who charges a $1,000 fee means you are the same price.

Trim data is whatever the dealer typed. A 50-mile search for F-150 XLs returned 56 trucks. Many were STXs, several were Platinums, one was a Roush, and one was a $46,000 truck sitting in an XL set.

Damage never shows up in the comp. A hail-damaged Platinum listed as an XL at 29 grand makes your clean 35 grand truck look overpriced. You only find it by clicking into every unit.

Your own lot data comes first. 30 trucks in stock, on pace to sell 10, truck leads not contacted. That is controllable. The market data is one input, and a skewed one.

Why the percentage is off before you even look at it

Every pricing tool and every listing site is working from the same raw material: what dealers typed into their inventory feed. Cars.com, AutoTrader, and CarGurus publish it. vAuto, VinCue, DealersLink, and the rest pull it back in and build a competitive set out of it. Jasen's point is that none of these tools are lying on purpose. They are faithfully reporting data that was wrong when it left the dealer.

That matters because price to market is the number most used car managers reprice off of. If the set is skewed, the 98% you see is not the 98% a shopper sees, and the market is not as far below you as the report says. This is a cousin of the argument in why dealers keep saying "my market is different": the market report and the lot rarely agree, and the lot is the one that pays the floorplan.

How dealer fees change the comparison

Jasen pulled up a Ford store looking at a RAM 1500 priced at 25,500, eight trucks in the competitive set, worth 98% of market. Then he clicked into the comps. One competitor's 26,694 was really a 25,900 truck with a $699 fee rolled in. Another was at 25,814 once a $280 fee and a registration fee were counted. Same truck, same tool, but the comparison was between his no-fee price and their with-fee prices.

Then he ran the math for a dealer he had just talked to who charges a $999 processing fee. Add that to 25,500 and you get 26,499. The truck is no longer at 98% of market. It is at 102%. As Jasen put it, if you are a grand cheaper than the other guy but you have a $1,000 fee, you are the same price. The tool cannot fix this for you because some dealers charge nothing, so it cannot add a fee to every unit. You have to add yours by hand before you believe the percentage. Whether you are pricing like a retailer or a wholesaler, the fee has to be in the number you compare.

Why your F-150 XL competitive set is full of Platinums

The second problem is trim. Jasen searched Cars.com for Ford F-150s within 50 miles of Olathe, Kansas, and filtered to XL. Fifty-six trucks came back. He likes Fords for this exercise because trim is not VIN-specific, which means the field is filled in by whoever built the listing. You could tell from the grilles alone that many were not XLs. Five had leather. One was a Platinum. One was a Roush build with something like 700 horsepower. One was a $46,000 truck sitting in a base-trim comp set. Another 10 were STXs, which is really an XL with a package, the way a Lariat with a Tremor package is still a Lariat.

Then he clicked into a Platinum listed at 29 grand and found it covered in hail damage. If you are sitting on a clean Platinum at 35 and your tool says a comp is at 29, your instinct is to drop. The reality is that truck is not your comp. Jasen's read is that the dealer probably listed it as an XL on purpose, because the damage put it at XL money and an XL shopper might see a loaded truck they can get cheap and have a buddy work out the dents.

I don't care what the market's saying, and I don't care what the auction's saying. Here's what's going on in your lot.Jasen Rice, LotParty Quick Tip

What to look at instead

None of this means ignore the market. It means the market is one input and your own lot is the one you can act on. Jasen's example: 30 trucks in stock, on pace to sell 10. That is a fact, and it does not care what trim somebody in a neighboring county typed. Isolate the truck leads, contact them today, and then go find where the 10-unit gap lives. Is it the 31-to-45-day bucket? Purchases versus trades? Franchise versus non-franchise? Large SUVs, compact cars, 2025 model years?

He also made a point that gets lost in most pricing conversations. If 60 to 70% of operators do not manage age and list cars carelessly, and you are a top 10% store, the competitive set is benchmarking you against people who do not run their lot the way you do. A great car with a lazy dealer behind it sits, looks like a slow mover in the data, and shows up as high days supply for a unit that is actually a good car. Skewed data works both ways. That is why a disciplined repricing cadence should start with what your lot is telling you, then check the market, and not the other way around.

Three Monday moves from this tip.

Add your fee before you read price to market

Pull your five oldest units. Add your doc or processing fee to each price and recompute the percentage against the competitive set. Anything that jumps from the high 90s past 100 was never as cheap as the report said.

Click into every comp on your worst car

Take the one unit your tool says is priced right but is not selling. Open every vehicle in its competitive set. Check the trim in the photos, look for damage, and look at the fee breakdown. Throw out the ones that are not really comps and see where you land.

Start with your own pace, not the market's

Count the units in the segment that is off pace (30 trucks, on pace for 10). Pull every active lead on those cars and contact the ones nobody has touched in two days. Then look at which age bucket, source, or segment holds the gap.

Where LotWalk fits

Everything in this tip works with a listing site, a pricing tool, and a manager willing to click. What LotWalk adds is the "look at your own lot first" half. The At Risk view breaks your inventory into age buckets and into Franchise, Non-Franchise, Trade, and Purchase, each with its own sale rate against your monthly goal, so the 10-unit gap Jasen describes has an address. Market View sits next to it with your market listings and shopper counts, so the comp set is a check on your numbers rather than the starting point. The pricing tool prices the car. LotWalk tells you which cars and which leads need working today.

Read the whole tip.

Show transcript (lightly edited for readability)

It does not matter which tool you use

First of all, listing sites. I'm going to use a third-party listing site, and it doesn't matter which one. I'm going to be on Cars.com. It could be AutoTrader. It could be CarGurus. I'm also going to look at market data in vAuto, but it doesn't matter if it's vAuto, VinSolutions, Digital First Look, ACV MAX, or DealersLink. Just hear me out on that. It doesn't matter what I'm looking at, because all this information is based on what dealers are feeding to the systems. The Cars.coms and vAutos and VinSolutions of the world are going to grab data from Cars.com, which is what dealers put out. So this is where I'm going to talk about how your used car competitive set data is lying to you.

I was going to start at the Cars.com part, but let's talk about the vAuto side of it, the pricing tools. Again, it doesn't matter what tool I'm using. Here's the dealership. It happens to be a Ford store looking at a RAM 1500. Narrow down the left rail, competitive set, eight in the market, worth 98% of market. This is where it's not going to be accurate. Here's why.

The fee hiding inside the competitive set

We're at 25,500. Let's go to the competitive set. If I look at the competitive set, it's comparing my 25,500 to their 26,694. If I go look at the 26,694, this dealer actually has a $699 fee, because their price is 25,900, and with the fee it's 26,694. So 26,694 is what vAuto is going to compare my inventory price to. Let's go back to our 25 grand. That 25 grand does not include the dealer's fee.

Here's another example. If I look at this dealer online, they're at 25,814. If you go to their listing on Cars.com, to be apples to apples, this dealer has a $280 fee and a registration fee. So their price is really 25,814. Am I really at 98% of the market, or do I have to put 25,814 in to be apples to apples? Now I'm 99%.

I was just on a call with a dealer who had a $999 processing fee. If we go back to this example, he was at 98% of the market without his fee, because again, we're comparing to a data set that has fees in it. Apples to apples, if I compare mine to the ones with fees, I'd be at 26,499 with my $999 fee, and I'm no longer 98%. I'm 102%, because the cars in the competitive set have the fee applied. If I'm a grand cheaper than this guy but I have a $1,000 fee, we're actually the same price when you look at it that way. I've got to add the grand of my fee into the price to get an accurate comparison.

Now, it's not a fault of vAuto or these inventory tools, because sometimes you go into a car and a dealer doesn't have fees. They can't add a fee to some and not to the others. But just understand, if you're scratching your head wondering why cars are not selling, add your fee in there and see how you really compare, because most of the cars they're comparing you to have the fee in the data. Here's an AutoTrader listing that's easier to see. If I go to see price and breakdowns, sometimes the fee is broken out and sometimes it isn't. That's one area where your competitive set can be lying to you.

56 F-150 XLs that are not XLs

Now look at this competitive set. Let's imagine you have an F-150 XL or something like that. Here's Cars.com, Ford F-150 for sale in Olathe, Kansas, only a 50-mile radius. The reason I like looking at Fords is because they're not VIN-specific. I've mentioned it before. I'm looking at F-150 XLs and there are 56 of them. If you look at these XLs, you can tell a lot of these are not XLs just by the grille alone. I spent time earlier clicking through them and I saw a bunch of them with leather. Let's go in here and look at the five that actually have leather seats.

So let's assume you have an F-150 XL that you're trying to compare to a market data set. Supposedly there are 55 of them. A lot of them are STXs or Platinums. Take a look at this truck. It's a Platinum. Take a look at this truck. It's really a Roush with 700 horsepower or whatever it's got in it. That's not an XL. So I might be at 90% of the market on my XL. Well, of course. It's throwing in a $46,000 truck. This is probably an XL body that didn't get specified.

The hail damage that never shows up in the comp

But let's assume they did specify it, and I did this on my last video. Let's assume this is an actual Platinum and they narrowed it down to a Platinum and not an XL. Look at the hail damage on this truck. Look how much damage this truck has. So even if they narrowed down to a Platinum and they're priced at 29 grand, and you're like, God, I'm at 35, how's this guy priced at 29? Until you go look at every car in your competitive set and see this happen, you won't know.

I would say it's misleading, but again, it's not Cars.com's fault, because the dealer put it out there this way. I think the dealer purposely listed it as an XL because it's probably priced closer to an XL due to the hail damage. Somebody looking for a Platinum is not buying it, but somebody looking at an XL might think, oh, I can get a nice loaded-up truck on the cheap and maybe get my buddy to work out the dents.

Look at your own lot first

So if you're making decisions on that data alone and not looking at your own lot first and your own lot data, that's the problem. What's happening on my lot? I've got 30 trucks in stock and I'm only on pace to sell 10. Let's isolate my truck leads, and in the meantime, let's contact any truck leads I have. That's controllable stuff, and that's what we focus on at Lotpop. Hold on a second. I don't care what the market's saying, and I don't care what the auction's saying. Here's what's going on in your lot.

Because when I look at the market and I see stuff like that, hail-damaged Platinums listed as XLs, Roushes listed as XLs, that's not even including the STXs. I go in there and there are cars listed as STXs, another 10 of them. Well, an STX is really an XL with an STX package. It's like having a Lariat truck with a Tremor package. So the data out there is really skewed. No fault of Cars.com. That's what's put out there. No fault of the inventory management tool either, because they're pulling data from what dealers put out there.

And in the meantime, if 60 to 70% of the operators out there don't care about age and are listing cars wrong, and you're a top 20 dealer, a top 10% dealer, you're comparing your performance and your inventory to dealers that don't operate like you. Think about just the lead portion of it. Great car, everything else is right, and dealers are getting the leads on that great car, but they don't reply to those leads. The car sits, and it makes it look like a high days supply and a bad mover. In reality, it's a really good mover. You just happen to have a dealer that's a bad operator not following up with the leads, so the car's sitting.

There are so many variables to the success of a car that it's hard to look at just one data set or a couple of data sets. If anything, focus on your data first. Figure out your holes, what's slowing you down. If you're 10 units off pace, is it in your 31 to 45 age bucket? Is it on your purchases or your trades? Is it on your franchise or your non-franchise? Is it on your large SUVs, your intermediate and compact cars, or your 2025s? There are areas where you can go find those units, and that's where we help our dealers. We combine these two worlds.

So if you need some help, go to lotpop.com and we'd love to talk to you about how we can help you get around this stuff, because it's out there. You're going to have to work around it, but the best bet is to control what you control. I can't control these dealers listing cars this way, but you can control how you do it. Do a better job and make sure what you're doing makes an impact on your sales. Hope this was helpful. Have a good strong finish.

Transcript lightly edited for readability from the live stream. Watch the video above for Jasen's screen share.

Questions dealers ask about competitive set data.

Why does my pricing tool say I'm at 98% of market but the car still isn't selling?

Two common reasons. Your competitors' listed prices may include their dealer fees while yours does not, so you are cheaper on paper only. And the competitive set may include the wrong trims or damaged units that pull the average price down. Add your own fee to your price, then click through every unit in the set before you trust the percentage.

Do dealer fees count in price to market?

They do when the competitor's listing includes them. Many pricing tools pull the price that shows on the listing site, and on many listings that number already has a $699 or $999 processing fee baked in. The tools cannot add a fee to every car because some dealers do not charge one, so the burden is on you to add yours before comparing.

Why does my competitive set show trims that aren't really comparable?

Because the trim field is whatever the listing dealer typed. In Jasen's example, a 50-mile search for Ford F-150 XLs returned 56 trucks, and many were STX, Platinum, or even a Roush build. Some were listed as a lower trim on purpose because hail damage forced the price down. The data is only as clean as the dealers feeding it.

Should I price off the competitive set or off my own lot data?

Start with your own lot. Jasen's read is that market data is one input, and a skewed one, while your own numbers are controllable: how many trucks you stock, how many you are on pace to sell, which age bucket or segment is off pace, and which truck leads have not been contacted. Fix what you can see and control first, then use the market as a check.

Why does your competitive set say 98% of market when you're really at 102%?

Five things to check before you trust that percentage.

Why the percentage is off before you even look at it

How dealer fees change the comparison

Why your F-150 XL competitive set is full of Platinums

What to look at instead

Three Monday moves from this tip.

Add your fee before you read price to market

Click into every comp on your worst car

Start with your own pace, not the market's

Where LotWalk fits

Read the whole tip.

It does not matter which tool you use

The fee hiding inside the competitive set

56 F-150 XLs that are not XLs

The hail damage that never shows up in the comp

Look at your own lot first

Questions dealers ask about competitive set data.

More Quick Tips

Why is dropping the price the wrong first move when sales slow down?

What do fees, photos, and descriptions do to your listings?

Priced aggressively and still not selling? Here's why.

Want someone to walk your lot with you?