The pace of auto dealership buy-sell transactions remained healthy in the second quarter as tariff-busting auto sales buoyed blue-sky values and buyers flush with cash gained during the pandemic looked to grow.

Kerrigan Advisors’ Blue Sky Report puts the deals up 8% year-over-year in the first six months of 2025 to 220. Despite market challenges of trade tariffs, inflation and high interest rates, it forecasts more of the same for the second half.

There’s plenty of room to run from here. The sell-side adviser observed that more buyers than sellers are in the market as many sellers wait for their franchise values to rise above what’s considered the 2024 profit trough. Kerrigan’s Blue Sky Index is consequently up about 3% to 175.

Average blue-sky values are already 75% above prepandemic levels, though 17% off the 2022 peak, said the firm, which forecasts the index to approach 180 by the end of the year. 

In the last two quarters, Kerrigan expects more localized buy-sell activity by private dealers, discounts of franchises requiring new facilities, and more transactions in states no longer subject to gas-powered auto sales curbs influenced by a California mandate that the federal government axed in June.

Buyers are, for one, less willing to take on facility improvements in an economy made less certain as U.S. trade policy remains in ongoing flux.

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