Fear Traps Buyers In Boring Grayscale Cars That They Park In Front Of Boring Grayscale Houses

The Story

Thanks, Reagan.

Black, white, gray, and silver have long been popular paint choices for cars. After all, who doesn’t remember Henry Ford famously initially refusing to sell the Model T in any color other than black?. But there’s no denying how much less colorful cars have gotten in recent decades. As the Atlantic put it:.

The share of new cars in grayscale colors rose from 60 percent in 2004 to 80 percent in 2023. Production of purple cars dropped 93 percent over that period, gold by 97 percent. “I don’t know how many different variants of silver and gray there could possibly be, but I think BMW and Mercedes have discovered it,” Karl Brauer, the analyst behind the report, told me.

As the Atlantic points out, a 2024 iSeeCars study found that cars painted yellow, orange, and green held their values better than grayscale cars, but the belief that colorful cars depreciate faster still persists. That same misplaced fear also appears to be driving housing trends, where a Better Homes and Gardens analysis from 2025 found that 84% of listing agents recommended eliminating any color from your home before selling even though a Zillow study from the same year found that olive green and navy blue paint on the walls actually increased sale prices.

One underrated factor that’s pushing buyers toward a sad, depressing grayscale life, however, is our old friend the homeowners’ association. The vast majority of new home builds are subject to HOA rules, and if there’s one thing HOAs love, it’s enforcing sameness. The contrast in styles and colors that you see in cities like Savannah hasn’t just gone out of style in newer neighborhoods. It’s been banned by HOAs that hate individuality and have homeowners convinced that any change or slight difference will tank their property values.

If you know much about the history of HOAs, the fact that they’re afraid of color shouldn’t be much of a surprise. They were created to keep post-WWII neighborhoods white-only, and their obsession with mandating uniformity hasn’t changed much since those practices were outlawed, at least on paper. Over time, “mandated earth-tone palettes for home facades, and even restricted the colors of street-visible features such as mailboxes, roofs, and curtains. Instead of resenting these limits, buyers came to see greige paint as securing their investment.”.

As HOAs pushed homeowners to embrace their vision of mandatory sameness, buyers also began purchasing fewer colorful cars. But is it just HOAs, or were HOAs part of a larger trend?. Determining causation is difficult, but it’s also impossible to read that colorful cars peaked in the late 1970s without considering the massive economic changes from the Reagan era. In addition to cutting taxes on the wealthy and gutting worker, safety, and environmental protections, Republican policies also led to stagnant wages, even as corporate profits soared.

Business owners were thrilled, of course, but what’s good for the C-suite is usually terrible for everyone else. Even those who benefit from the current K-shaped economy live in a world of near-constant layoffs, few meaningful raises or promotions, and general instability. So it’s no wonder that buyers are afraid to take risks with property values and vehicle depreciation. That also means that, unless we see some major structural changes to the economy, we’re probably stuck mostly seeing sad, depressing grayscale cars parked in front of sad, depressing grayscale homes. Thanks, Reagan.

Why It Matters

So it’s no wonder that buyers are afraid to take risks with property values and vehicle depreciation.

CarMotion Daily’s Take

Industry watchers will be following the follow-through, not just the headline.