The Worst City to Buy a Used Car

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The Worst City to Buy a Used Car

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Used car prices have soared over the past two years. Supply chain problems caused a shortage of inventory. Demand for the limited inventory drove up prices. People turned to used cars as an alternative to pricey new ones. That affected inventory negatively, and used car prices rose as well. Used car prices vary significantly from state to state and city to city. Anchorage is the metropolitan area where used car prices are highest against the national average. (Click here for the cities where riding the bus is free.)
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An analysis of Cars.com data and car advertising from state to state and city to city was used for price comparisons. Clunker Junker then looked at nationwide numbers. On a state basis, Alaska, Hawaii and New Mexico have America’s priciest used cars, the study showed. The premium in Alaska was 10.69% above the national number. The comparable figure for Hawaii was 7.76% and for New Mexico it was 7.27%.
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At the far end of the spectrum, in Florida and Michigan, prices were 4.45% below the national figure. They were 4.34% below in New Jersey and 4.25% lower in New York.
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There was no pattern among the cities with prices above the national level. Anchorage’s premium was 9.84%. Just behind it, the number was 8.85% in El Paso and 8.09% in Wichita.
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Anchorage may have the highest costs due to freight expenses for the 48 continental states. That relationship, however, is not entirely clear.

For used car buyers who want to find below-average used cars, the best metro is Jersey City, where the discount to the national number is 9.08%.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

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