This Is the Best Day of the Year to Buy a Used Car

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 19, 10:15AM EST

24/7 Wall St. Key Points

Some days during the year are much better than others for buying used cars.
A recent analysis reveals that the best chances for getting a good deal are on holidays during winter.
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This Is the Best Day of the Year to Buy a Used Car — © Dmitry Kalinovsky / Shutterstock.com

The average price of a new car today is $50,080. People who cannot afford that can turn to a used car. The average price of those is $26,889, based on iSeeCars data. Either way, supply is a factor, including the availability of parts. Another factor is the rising cost of labor.

Some days during the year are much better than others for buying used cars. The best days tend to be on holidays during winter. iSeeCars calculated these figures based on a study of the purchase of 40 million cars from October 2024 to October 2025.

An iSeeCars expert described the trend in more detail. Analyst Karl Brauer said, “Consumers struggling to find a good deal on a used vehicle will have far more opportunities in the colder months.”

The chance of getting a deal with a price reduction of 10% or more on any given day throughout the year is 13.7%. Obviously, negotiating is part of used car transactions.

One of the best days to buy a used car is less than two weeks away. On Thanksgiving and Black Friday, the chance of getting a deal is 9.5%, which is ninth on the best days list.

The list is topped by Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when the odds of getting a deal are 65.5%. This holiday is on the third Monday of January.

The second-best day is New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day at 58.6%.

These are the 10 best times to buy a used car, based on percentage discount:

MLK Day (65.5%)
New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day (58.6%)
January (55.6%)
Presidents Day (47.0%)
February (36.2%)
Veterans Day (23.1%)
Christmas Eve (15.2%)
December (15.2%)
Thanksgiving/Black Friday (9.5%)
Halloween (6.8%)

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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.