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Houston-area auto dealers reported a drop in sales for the second straight month in November. Total sales came to about 27,693 cars, trucks, and SUVs. That’s down 5.2 percent from October and 3.1 percent down compared to a year ago.
“It was still the second best November in the past fifteen years,” says Steve McDowell, president of InfoNation and publisher of TexAutoFacts. Much of the decline came in the form of lower fleet sales — that is, sales to companies and other large organizations, rather than individual buyers. “Even with the drop in [sales] volume, we’ve seen an increase in [sales of] trucks and SUVs that was quite dramatic, and that has pushed up the average sales price to the highest it’s ever been. It’s up over $35,000 per unit.”
McDowell credits the jump in truck and SUV sales to falling gasoline prices, which make the larger vehicles cheaper to fill up.