Buy a Used Car on New Year’s Day and Save Money

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 19, 8:15AM EST

Quick Read

A recent analysis reveals the season and the holidays on which used car buyers are most likely to get the best deals.
Topping the list was New Year’s Day.

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Buy a Used Car on New Year’s Day and Save Money — © welcomia / iStock via Getty Images

Car dealers often offer incentives and price cuts to bring in buyers. This has become more prevalent as inventories have risen from the tight level they reached during the worst COVID-19 pandemic. It applies to used cars as well. According to a new study, used car discounts are seasonal and even vary on individual holidays.

iSeeCars reported on which holidays people are most likely to get deals, compared to the national average day throughout the year. The best of these is New Year’s Eve/Day. Buyers that day are 47.9% more likely to get a deal. MLK Day is the second most likely day at 43.3%. It also falls in January. This compares to the national number for November, which was 10.3%.

Reviewing the trend, Karl Brauer, iSeeCars executive analyst, said, “Most people have a sense that car shopping slows down during the winter months, with car dealerships often struggling to find customers.” He also said that if people want a used car, they should consider buying it between November 1st and February 28th. The month during which most people are likely to get a deal is January, when 41.1% of vehicles are more likely to be sold at discounts than the other months of the year.

The iSeeCars was based on over 39 million used car sales from 2023 through November 2024. Data were separated by month, day of the month, and day of the week.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.