October New-Car Payment Hits a Record $823 Even as Prices Stay Flat, J.D. Power Forecasts

The average monthly payment on a new vehicle financed in October 2026 will be $823, up 2.6 percent and the highest ever for an October, according to a J.D. Power and GlobalData forecast published October 22. The average transaction price barely moved, at $46,329, down 0.1 percent from a year earlier, and incentives rose 13.1 percent to $3,304 per vehicle. Sales are holding up in the forecast, with 1,327,100 new vehicles expected to be sold in October at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 15.6 million, unchanged from a year ago.

A payment has three parts: the amount borrowed, the interest rate, and the length of the loan. With prices flat, the amount borrowed hardly moved. The rate did, rising to an average of 6.81 percent, the highest for an October since 2023. More buyers are also stretching the loan to bring the monthly number down: 13.3 percent of new-vehicle loans now run 84 months or longer, up 0.9 points from a year earlier. Those buyers pay less each month and more interest overall. Already, 29.6 percent of trade-ins carry negative equity, meaning the owner owes more than the car is worth, and that debt often gets rolled into the next loan.

The sales mix in the forecast shows where demand is moving. Hybrids account for 18.6 percent of retail sales, up 4.0 points, while electric vehicles account for 6.9 percent, down 0.3 points. Readers should not confuse this October forecast with the Edmunds third-quarter figures, which put the average new-car payment at $787 on a different dataset and period. Both datasets point the same way, but the J.D. Power October number is a forecast for one month, not a quarterly average, and the record it sets is specifically an October record.