Typically because there is an education and need asymmetry between the buyer and seller in a lot of these cases. If the car is maybe worth $3K cash, but a dealer can lease it to someone for $4K by requiring no money down but high interest rates on the loan/monthly payments, where does one say the "market value" is?
The dealer is getting $4K (or more in the cases where they repossess the car and re-lease it) because the buyer often has few options on how to get transportation so they're implicitly forced to take worse terms (say, they need a car immediately to get to their low-wage job otherwise they are fired and forced into worse poverty). Of course, you can still say the car doesn’t have a value until a transaction takes place.
These socio-economics dynamics mean cars have much more of a spectrum of "value" than just one-off car purchases. Framed another way with the parent comment, buyers are often under implicit economic duress, it's just not duress forced by the seller.
I'm not strictly opposed to markets like subprime auto/personal loans, as often these markets would look worse without these options. But a lot of times people see supply-and-demand situations in very limited scope and miss external factors that influence choices.
The dealer is getting $4K (or more in the cases where they repossess the car and re-lease it) because the buyer often has few options on how to get transportation so they're implicitly forced to take worse terms (say, they need a car immediately to get to their low-wage job otherwise they are fired and forced into worse poverty). Of course, you can still say the car doesn’t have a value until a transaction takes place.
These socio-economics dynamics mean cars have much more of a spectrum of "value" than just one-off car purchases. Framed another way with the parent comment, buyers are often under implicit economic duress, it's just not duress forced by the seller.
I'm not strictly opposed to markets like subprime auto/personal loans, as often these markets would look worse without these options. But a lot of times people see supply-and-demand situations in very limited scope and miss external factors that influence choices.