Car-Buying Process Rebounds in July

June saw the biggest drop and lowest score in the history of our Ease of Purchase scorecard. Luckily, there was a rebound in July but the scores didn’t bounce all the way back to where they’d been earlier in the year. The drop of 13 percentage points from May to June’s 77% was corrected by a 9-percentage-point increase, leaving July’s Ease of Purchase score at 86%. That’s very good but not at May’s 90% or even July 2024’s 88%. Clearly, there are still areas seeing weakness as car buyers navigate a tricky market to kick off the third quarter of the year. 

The part of the process that saw the biggest drop in June was applying for credit, falling 14 percentage points leaving just 53% of shoppers saying it was easy. It also had one of the biggest rebounds to 63% in July, but the gap between May’s numbers is still one of the highest. Finding the car they wanted and agreeing to the value of the trade-in bounced back best with just a 2-percentage-point gap from May. 

These numbers still show some weakness as buyers had to visit more stores to complete the process. More than a quarter (27%) of buyers had to visit three or more stores in July, up from 24% in June, which was the same number seen in May and significantly higher than the 21% in July 2024. 

This is slightly surprising as more buyers found the car they wanted in stock in July (53%) than they did the past two months or last year at this time. Far fewer people opted for buying vehicles in transit, which may be a case of inventory issues related to production slowdowns many are attributing to tariff uncertainty.  

The turmoil that roiled numbers in June may have had an impact on how shoppers bought in July. Over the history of the scorecard, there have been very few buyers who completed the transaction to purchase a car entirely online. That number usually hovers around 1% and is often zero. In July, 5% of respondents said they completed the entire purchase online. 

One respondent told us, “Their online platform let me compare car specs side by side easily, and the chat support answered my financing questions in real time. Also, the delivery was scheduled to my home, skipping dealership trips. It was super smooth.”

Others also mentioned chatting online with sales representatives as a benefit to a smoother purchase whether they did it entirely online or finished the process at the dealership. 

These buyers may have heard of remarkable wait times around Memorial Day, which impacted our June data, showing more than a third (36%) of buyers said it took longer than they expected to complete their purchase. That was up from 31% in May and remained high again in July at 33%. That’s also significantly higher than last July’s 29%. 

As economic uncertainty remains a top concern, expect car buyers to have more trepidation than they’ve had in the past as they move through the purchase process. This could lead to more questions about the vehicle itself or F&I products and ultimately lead to a longer time at the dealership to finish the deal.