The Best Places In America To Buy A Used Car And How To Find Them

NEW YORK, NY — Memorial Day weekend is here and that means many savvy car shoppers will try to capitalize on great sales. According to Autolist, an online service that helps compare car prices, shoppers looking to get behind the wheel of a used car this weekend may want to rethink heading to the nearest dealership.

Autolist says Florida ranked No. 1 in the country last month for vehicle affordability. A car in The Sunshine State typically costs $971 less than what the national average.

Similarly, the best city to buy a used car in America is Wellington, Florida, where shoppers pay on average $1,750 less than the national average for cities.

Interested in saving a few bucks on your next car? Click here to find the best city and county for used car-buying in your state.

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.

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.

There are between 5 million and 8 million listings at any given time on Autolist's website.

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.