The country's largest car dealer has issued a couple of warnings in the wake of the recent floods.
First off, more than 10,000 written-off cars in Auckland are driving up demand, meaning prices are through the roof.
Second off, there are still many flood-damaged vehicles being sold out there… so if you’re getting a mint deal, it might be too good to be true.
Turners auto retail CEO Greg Hedgepeth spoke to Tova O'Brien on Friday morning, telling her that car prices have had a significant increase.
"Car prices have been high over the last few years since the pandemic and since the clean car legislation… and then this has put some more upward pressure on them," Hedgepeth said.
"It really varies and depends on the makes and models - there are more of some cars than others - but anywhere in the last month or so, we've seen increases from 10 to 30 percent on different models depending on how demand is."
Hedgepeth added the more than 10,000 cars that have been written-off since the recent floods are "probably based on the insured ones", meaning there will be many more uninsured, written-off cars they don't know about.
"There's probably a lot more that aren't insured that we don't have any tracking on," he said.
"The people who didn't have insurance on their vehicles who aren't able to claim that vehicle insurance as it gets written-off… I suspect that a lot of those cars will be going up on platforms where people sell from public to public, where the buyer has no protection.
"People need to look out for flood-damaged cars - if you're in Auckland and you see a car on a website that's being sold privately, that looks too good to be true, it probably is."
Listen to the full interview between Greg Hedgepeth and Tova above.
You can also download the full interview on the Tova podcast, and listen on the go.
