The $25k car is going extinct?

The sweet spot has always been a 1 year old used car with low miles. There’s lots of those for less than or about $25k. Honda, Toyota, and Mazda have models in those ranges that will easily last a decade.

1 year old used cars are inevitably going to get more expensive as new cars get more expensive (or cheaper new cars cease being made)

I've bought a couple of those and never again. They're usually former rental cars and people best the shit out of them. I've had so many stupid things break

I bought a 1 year old used model and it's worked for me for 10 years now. Ymmv. Maybe worth getting a mechanic to look before buying

Even better, a 3 year old used car with low miles.

In 2016 I picked up a 2013 320i Sport w/ 22k miles on the clock for $18.5k. The sticker on the car was just over $36k. I did have to fly to a relatively remote town (Ogden Utah) and drive it home to San Diego, so that was an extra $320 for the plane ticket/shuttle/gas and 14 hours out of a saturday.

It was almost out of warranty, so pre-purchase I paid a local shop $110 to do a similar inspection to what BMW does for CPO and it only needed brake pads. Aside from the brake pads and scheduled maintenance, eventually replaced the tires, so about $2000 in maintenance over that period. Sold it for $14.5k w/ 50k on the clock 6 years later.

Could have held onto it much longer but was eager to do the nomad thing as covid was clearing up.

I looked into that when I was buying a car in 2020 and I found the price discount wasnt nearly as big as I thought it was going to be plus the car was out of warranty plus all the parts now had 10k miles of wear on them. A new set of tires is like $1200. I was able to spend a few grand more for a brand new car of the same model.

It might be a German car thing, as the value drops precipitously once it's close to out of warranty. There were barely any savings on cars that were within a year old, whereas I was able to get something for half sticker that was nearly the same vehicle.

Used car prices went through the roof in 2020-2022 for pandemic-related reasons, so trying to take any lesson from that era is unhelpful.

It can also depend on the popularity of a given car in a particular area. In 2012 we wanted to buy a lightly used Honda Fit, which were quite popular in our city. But, possibly because of that popularity, the prices of used Fits weren't that much less than a new one, so we ended up getting a new one instead.

If you don’t drive much yourself, “low miles” after a couple years doesn’t matter quite as much. e.g. I bought my car at a couple years old with 40k miles already, but in the following twelve years I’ve only run it up to about 115k miles, so I’ve turned it from a “high-mileage two-year-old car” into a “low-mileage 14-year-old car”.

Why would anyone sell a good car with one year old and low mileage? It's a lottery ticket: it could go well, or the car might be already damaged. I personally know a bunch of people that bought second hand and are "my car is only a couple of years old, and I found the engine / gearbox / frame is damaged. Lets repair it barely and sell it ASAP to recover some money". But weirdly, they go to the second hand market again, thinking they are the only smart ones doing that. They all know a mechanic that ensures the car is OK, just like they did with the first one.

I was very disappointed when searching the used car market for cars with low mileage, only to found they are almost as pricey as new but I don't know how they have been taken care of. A lot of them come from the rental business. I paid a bit premium (2K or so) for my new-zero-kilometer car, and after 6 years is as good as new, as it is cared like a baby.

Following on my original comment - I saved about $4k over the next cheapest option (which would have still been a very good discount vs. new) simply by expanding my range from 150 miles to 500 miles and finding one in the middle of nowhere. Having the salesperson/owner drive the car over to a mechanic to do a CPO-like audit of its condition greatly reduces the risk of a more remote purchase.

A one way ticket from San Diego to Vegas was $180, and a 2 hour shuttle from there to St. George (mistakenly said Odgen above) was only $20. The salesperson from the dealership picked me up from the bus station and after a brief test drive and some paperwork I got on the road for the 450 mile drive back. I left home on the train to the airport at 9am, and was back at home with my new to me car at 11pm that night.

Considering we're on "Hacker" News, it's very much a worthwhile process to hack considering the cost savings vs. actual effort.

Mine were all "Certified Pre-owned" so had dealerships go through them and even had a (small and toothless) warranty attached.