The Best Cities To Buy A Used Car In Michigan

Memorial Day weekend is here and that means a lot of savvy car shoppers will try to capitalize on the best deals. According to an online service that helps compare car prices, shoppers in Michigan looking to get behind the wheel of a used car this weekend may want to rethink heading to the nearest dealership or to Motor City, where the prices are below the national average but definitely not as cheap as it gets in Michigan.

Here are the top 5 most affordable cities in Michigan:

1. Pontiac -- $794 below the Michigan average
2. Novi -- $787 below the Michigan average
3. Farmington Hills -- $779 below the Michigan average
4. Southfield -- $693 below the Michigan average
5. Troy -- $678 below the Michigan average

Detroit specifically is the No. 13 most affordable city in Michigan to buy a used vehicle this spring. That’s better than the No. 14 ranking in March 2017 with the average vehicle currently priced $465 less than the state average.

Autolist says Michigan ranked No. 12 in the country last month for vehicle affordability overall.

Autolist.com found the following five vehicles to have the greatest savings this weekend in Detroit:

1. Chevrolet Suburban
2. GMC Yukon XL
3. Chevrolet Silverado 1500
4. Ford Explorer
5. Chevrolet Tahoe

The study also looked at local trends in price and comparing this year’s rankings to last year’s holiday weekend, here were the top 5 Michigan cities that became more affordable:

1. Portage -- $491 below the previous average
2. Novi -- $343 below the previous average
3. Pontiac -- $322 below the previous average
4. Ann Arbor -- $282 below the previous average
5. Farmington Hills -- $251 below the previous average

The prices of used cars can vary significantly in counties in the same general geographic area, Chase Disher, product manager for growth and analytics at the company, tells Patch. Knowing that information can empower shoppers.

“The buyer knows that they can actually go 20 minutes west or east or something, and potentially find a better deal on a car,” he says.

Those looking for the best deals might consider heading to an urban area, where there’s often more competition. That usually leads to lower prices.
“There tend to be more dealers, a lot more inventory and therefore more competition, so that tends to drive prices down,” he says.

But if you can, buy that sweet ride in Florida or California.

“Without a doubt, Florida tends to be the cheapest state consistently,” Disher says. “Often when I’m going to look at some of the top data I need to scroll past a bunch of Florida cities because that’s just single-handedly the best place to buy a car.”

The company aims to provide consumers and the automotive industry data to better understand local trends. Every month, the company refreshes its entire car-buying database and crunches the numbers for each city and county where it has statistically significant data. The firm compares the cities and the average price across them for different vehicles.

“I'm looking at California right now and I can see that, you know, Aliso Viejo is the cheapest city within all of California and the average price of a vehicle is $1,500 bucks less than other vehicles,” Disher says.

If you want see information for a specific city or county and see how it stacks up to others, head over to the Autolist website and type in the name of a city.

Autolist, based in the San Francisco area, is a metasearch automotive marketing platform. The company aims to provide the best search experience for finding a new, used or certified pre-owned vehicle.

The company has between 5 million and 8 million listings at any given time.

Disher notes the company’s data is based on listing prices and doesn’t include any taxes or other fees.

Patch reporter Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Image via Shutterstock