What does Great Deal mean?

Great Deal means the vehicle is priced below the comparable-range floor by at least OAV's minimum-gap margin — min(max(3% of the comparable-range floor, $500), $1,500). A listing below the floor by less than that margin is Fair Price, not a Great Deal (being a few dollars under the floor is not a standout deal). The verdict also requires a comparable cohort deep enough for a confident call: a low price with very few comparables is Unscored, not Great Deal.

What does Fair Price mean?

Fair Price means the vehicle is priced within the comparable range, or below the floor by less than the minimum-gap margin. Fair Price listings are not bargains in the same sense as Great Deal listings — they are simply correctly priced relative to the comparable cohort. A buyer who finds a vehicle they specifically want at Fair Price is paying market rate.

What does Overpriced mean?

Overpriced means the vehicle is priced above its supported comparable range. The label is a transparency signal — OAV surfaces Overpriced verdicts because the consumer value-prop is honest pricing data, not just deal hunting. Dealers see their own Overpriced inventory mix on their dealer page and can re-price to move it.

What does Unscored mean?

Unscored means OAV did not issue a price verdict because the evidence does not support one: too few closely comparable listings, comparable prices too widely scattered to define a reliable range, an advertised price OAV cannot validate or that sits implausibly far below every comparable, mileage high or uncertain enough that condition outweighs market position, or a configuration OAV cannot identify confidently enough to compare like with like. The specific reason is shown on every Unscored listing. This is the graceful-degradation case: a label that is not backed by data is worse than no label at all. Unscored listings still surface on the page — the consumer sees the price, mileage, days on lot, and other data — but the deal-rating badge is withheld.

Yes. OAV's vehicle market standardization technology — which underlies PTM's ability to compare listings across millions of vehicles from different dealers, sources, and naming conventions — is covered by U.S. Pat. No. 12,236,477 (issued February 25, 2025). The Price-to-Market verdict method itself is the subject of a pending U.S. patent application. This page publishes the verdict rule in full. How the comparable range is built is not disclosed publicly.

Methodology

Price-to-Market (PTM)

OAV's deal-rating system. OAV compares a listing's asking price against comparable listings and, when the evidence supports one, publishes a verdict: Great Deal, Fair Price or Overpriced. A Great Deal is priced below the comparable-range floor by at least OAV's minimum-gap margin. When OAV evaluates a listing but the evidence does not support a verdict, the listing is Unscored. OAV does not publish a verdict for a vehicle its title data identifies as branded or salvage. Days-on-lot and sell-through are separate demand signals, never verdict inputs.

Market snapshot · October 6, 2026 · refresh delayed · 2 days ago

Price-to-Market verdicts and Unscored

Great Deal: The vehicle is priced below the comparable-range floor by at least OAV's minimum-gap margin AND the supporting comparable cohort is deep enough for a confident verdict. Great Deal requires both conditions — a vehicle priced low against a thin cohort is surfaced as Unscored rather than mislabeled.
Fair Price: The vehicle is priced within the comparable range, or below the floor by less than the minimum-gap margin. Fair Price means the vehicle is correctly priced relative to its comparable cohort — not a bargain in the Great Deal sense, just market-aligned.
Overpriced: The vehicle is priced above its supported comparable range for comparable vehicles. OAV surfaces Overpriced verdicts as a transparency signal — the consumer value-prop is honest pricing data, not just deal hunting. Dealers see their own Overpriced inventory mix on their dealer page and can re-price to move it.
Unscored: Unscored means OAV did not issue a price verdict because the evidence does not support one: too few closely comparable listings, comparable prices too widely scattered to define a reliable range, an advertised price OAV cannot validate or that sits implausibly far below every comparable, mileage high or uncertain enough that condition outweighs market position, or a configuration OAV cannot identify confidently enough to compare like with like. The specific reason is shown on every Unscored listing. The vehicle still appears on the page with full data (price, mileage, days on lot) — only the deal-rating badge is withheld. This is intentional graceful-degradation: a label that is not backed by data is worse than no label at all.

What determines the PTM verdict?

One thing: how the asking price compares to the supported comparable range. A listing priced below the range floor by a meaningful margin is a Great Deal; priced within the range, Fair Price; priced above it, Overpriced. The “meaningful margin” is OAV's minimum-gap rule, stated exactly: the required gap = min(max(3% of the comparable-range floor, $500), $1,500), and a listing is a Great Deal only when range floor − asking price ≥ required gap. In plain terms: at least 3% below the comparable-range floor, never requiring more than $1,500, with a $500 minimum on lower-priced vehicles. A listing a few dollars under the floor is Fair Price, not a Great Deal.

Two things are often mistaken for verdict inputs but are not:

Comparable depth is a permission-to-score gate. It decides whether OAV has enough evidence to issue any verdict at all: when the comparable cohort is too thin, the listing is Unscored. Depth never moves a scored listing from one label to another.
Days-on-lot and sell-through are separate demand evidence, shown alongside the verdict. They never enter or modify the Price-to-Market verdict.

How the comparable range is scoped. OAV builds the supported comparable range starting from comparable vehicles in the local market, and broadens the geographic comparison set to a wider regional cohort when local inventory is not deep enough to support a reliable range. A vehicle is scored only when the resulting cohort is deep enough and the listed data passes OAV's reliability checks. When OAV evaluates a listing but the evidence does not support a verdict, the listing is Unscored, and the reason is shown on the vehicle's page.

The verdict thresholds above are published in full. What remains proprietary is the internal machinery that builds the comparable range in the first place — how the comparable cohort is assembled and standardized, the geographic and configuration fallback triggers, the reliability and suppression gates, and the data-quality controls. The verdict rule itself is disclosed so consumers and dealers can verify any rating's basis against the price and comparable range shown on the listing. No third-party score, dealer input, or other external signal enters the verdict; the only element OAV does not publish is its own construction of the comparable range.

This verdict rule is versioned — currently ptm-verdict-v1 — so the exact set of checks and the order they apply in is identified and dated; any change to that logic is published with a new version. The patent-pending comparable range it reads is a separate, read-only input and is not what this version governs.

Why some listings are Unscored

PTM is only as good as the comparable cohort behind the verdict. OAV first broadens the geographic comparison set when local inventory is thin; when even the broadened cohort does not produce enough comparable inventory — because the vehicle is unique, the trim is rare, or the market is low-volume — OAV surfaces Unscored rather than fabricating a confident verdict from shaky data.

The full vehicle data still appears on the listing page (price, mileage, year, days on lot, dealer, location). Only the deal-rating badge is withheld. Consumers can still make purchasing decisions; OAV simply does not put its name behind a price call that the data cannot support.

PTM and Demand-Verified Deals are complementary

PTM tells you the listing's price posture relative to the supported comparable range right now. Demand-Verified adds a second signal — recent sell-through evidence from a matched cohort of similar vehicles, as described on the Demand-Verified Deals page. The two signals are independent: a vehicle may be PTM Great Deal without being Demand-Verified (the velocity cohort might be too thin), and a vehicle may carry the Demand-Verified badge while rated Fair Price (cohort sell-through is strong, but the price is not below the comparable-range floor by the minimum-gap margin). The badge on its own is a demand signal, not a verdict. A Demand-Verified Deal is the badge plus a Great Deal verdict — never a blend of the two.

Full Demand-Verified methodology is at /demand-verified-deals.

Refresh cadence

PTM verdicts update with each inventory snapshot. Every market page and dealer page surfaces its current Market snapshot date in the page header so freshness is verifiable directly. Comparable cohorts are recomputed nightly from the latest snapshot.

PTM is deterministic — the same VIN against the same snapshot produces the same verdict. Consumers and dealers can rely on the rating being stable for the day; the verdict does not drift between page loads.

Patented vehicle market standardization

The technology that makes PTM possible — comparing listings across millions of vehicles from different dealers, sources, and naming conventions to produce confident verdicts — is protected by U.S. Patent No. 12,236,477 (issued February 25, 2025). The patent covers OAV's vehicle market standardization technology, which is the layer that lets a 2022 Honda Civic Sport at one dealer be reliably compared to the same generation and configuration at another dealer hundreds of miles away.

The methodology described on this page covers the rating's consumer-facing outputs and the abstract inputs that drive them. The comparable-cohort assembly logic and standardization weights that build the comparable range are not disclosed publicly; the verdict rule that turns that range into a label is published in full above. Powered by OAV's patented vehicle market standardization technology (U.S. Pat. No. 12,236,477).

Frequently asked questions

What is Price-to-Market (PTM)?: Price-to-Market (PTM) is OAV's deal-rating system. OAV compares a listing's asking price against comparable listings and, when the evidence supports one, publishes a verdict: Great Deal, Fair Price or Overpriced. A Great Deal is priced below the comparable-range floor by at least OAV's minimum-gap margin. When OAV evaluates a listing but the evidence does not support a verdict, the listing is Unscored. OAV does not publish a verdict for a vehicle its title data identifies as branded or salvage. Days-on-lot and sell-through are separate demand signals, never verdict inputs. Price-to-Market verdicts appear on OAV's market, dealer and vehicle pages.
What does Great Deal mean?: Great Deal means the vehicle is priced below the comparable-range floor by at least OAV's minimum-gap margin — min(max(3% of the comparable-range floor, $500), $1,500). A listing below the floor by less than that margin is Fair Price, not a Great Deal (being a few dollars under the floor is not a standout deal). The verdict also requires a comparable cohort deep enough for a confident call: a low price with very few comparables is Unscored, not Great Deal.
What does Fair Price mean?: Fair Price means the vehicle is priced within the comparable range, or below the floor by less than the minimum-gap margin. Fair Price listings are not bargains in the same sense as Great Deal listings — they are simply correctly priced relative to the comparable cohort. A buyer who finds a vehicle they specifically want at Fair Price is paying market rate.
What does Overpriced mean?: Overpriced means the vehicle is priced above its supported comparable range. The label is a transparency signal — OAV surfaces Overpriced verdicts because the consumer value-prop is honest pricing data, not just deal hunting. Dealers see their own Overpriced inventory mix on their dealer page and can re-price to move it.
What does Unscored mean?: Unscored means OAV did not issue a price verdict because the evidence does not support one: too few closely comparable listings, comparable prices too widely scattered to define a reliable range, an advertised price OAV cannot validate or that sits implausibly far below every comparable, mileage high or uncertain enough that condition outweighs market position, or a configuration OAV cannot identify confidently enough to compare like with like. The specific reason is shown on every Unscored listing. This is the graceful-degradation case: a label that is not backed by data is worse than no label at all. Unscored listings still surface on the page — the consumer sees the price, mileage, days on lot, and other data — but the deal-rating badge is withheld.
What determines the PTM verdict?: The Price-to-Market verdict is determined by one thing: where the asking price sits relative to the supported comparable range. A listing priced below the range floor by a meaningful margin — OAV's minimum-gap rule: at least 3% below the comparable-range floor, never requiring more than $1,500, with a $500 minimum on lower-priced vehicles — is a Great Deal; within the range it is Fair Price; above it, Overpriced. Two things are often mistaken for inputs but are not: (a) comparable depth is a permission-to-score gate — a cohort too thin to support a verdict yields Unscored, but depth never moves a scored listing between Great Deal, Fair Price, and Overpriced; (b) days on lot and sell-through are separate demand evidence shown alongside the verdict, never a verdict input. The verdict thresholds are published in full on this page, so consumers and dealers can verify any rating's basis against the price and comparable range shown on the listing. What remains proprietary is how the comparable range itself is built.
Is PTM the same as Demand-Verified?: No. PTM is the foundation; Demand-Verified is a higher-trust layer above PTM. PTM tells you the listing's price posture relative to the supported comparable range (Great Deal / Fair Price / Overpriced / Unscored). Demand-Verified adds a second signal — recent sell-through evidence from a matched cohort of similar vehicles (cohort construction is described on the Demand-Verified Deals page). A listing can be PTM Great Deal without being Demand-Verified (the velocity cohort might be too thin), and vice versa. See /demand-verified-deals for the full velocity-side methodology.
How often is PTM data refreshed?: PTM verdicts update with each inventory snapshot. Every market page and dealer page surfaces its current Market snapshot date so freshness is verifiable directly. Comparable cohorts are recomputed nightly from the latest inventory snapshot. PTM is deterministic — the same VIN against the same snapshot produces the same verdict, so consumers and dealers can rely on the rating being stable for the day.
Is PTM patented?: Yes. OAV's vehicle market standardization technology — which underlies PTM's ability to compare listings across millions of vehicles from different dealers, sources, and naming conventions — is covered by U.S. Pat. No. 12,236,477 (issued February 25, 2025). The Price-to-Market verdict method itself is the subject of a pending U.S. patent application. This page publishes the verdict rule in full. How the comparable range is built is not disclosed publicly.

Example market pages

Market answer pages show the Price-to-Market verdict for listings that have one. Deal sections, where a page has them, feature Great Deal listings; inventory grids can include Great Deal, Fair Price, Overpriced and Unscored listings, depending on the page.