Buffalo: 7th best city to buy used car

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - According to Cargurus.com , Buffalo is the seventh most affordable city to buy a used car.  Miami, Florida was the cheapest and Jackson, Mississippi was the most expensive, selling cars for roughly 9% more than the national average.

One of the reasons Buffalo ranked seventh is the high turnover rate of cars and a high volume of leases.

"You have to be more competitive than ever before to sell the used cars with the large volume of new car business we take in a lot of vehicles. The new car sale part of it is great, however you need to sell as many used because you are taking more trade ins," explained Basil Ford General Sales Manager Bill Bohn.

In other words, Buffalo has a lot of used cars. A 2011 Ford Fusion with 35,000 miles at Basil is listed at $17,808. The Kelly Blue Book value in Buffalo for the car is $19,750.

The Blue Book value of the same car in Pittsburgh , which was not listed in the top 10 of either category, was less than $100 more.

In Jackson, the Blue Book value was $20,300 but was as low as $18,900 , only about $1000 more than it was being sold in Buffalo.

"With access to the internet and everybody's pricing, usually people tend to start there and will find something remotely close to the area without having go across the country to find a car.  If it's a rare car we see that happen quite a bit," Bohn said.

He added that to be competitive and turn around used cars, reconditioning is key. And even though it is used, the goal is to make them as new as possible.