For instance, a 2017 Nissan Maxima with nearly 125,000 miles at the Dream Auto Group dealership in Woodlands,Texas, is listed for over $20,500.
“Rising used car prices are a trend that we noticed last summer, and it has really intensified in the past few weeks,” said Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights at car market tracker Edmunds.
A salesman at the Dream Auto dealership confirmed the used Maxima’s price and mileage.
That’s the highest price ever recorded by the research firm, which began tracking used vehicle sales in the early 1980s.
Fully a third of that historically large jump came from the sharp increase in used car prices, which surged 10% in April alone.
The used car market is a prime example of that trend, Adams added, with commuters still leery of public transport due to COVID-19 fears and people who fled cities during the pandemic now needing cars to get around.
Rental car companies, normally a reliable source of used cars, are instead buying used cars themselves in order to rebuild their fleets that were sold off last year as business travel and tourism came to a halt.
Caldwell thinks the current lack of supply could continue.
As a result, even cars in the 100,000 mile club are now hot commodities.
TrueCar, a website that lists used cars from dealers across the country and evaluates their sales price, currently shows 108,000 cars for sale with more than 100,000 miles.
Joe Carollo, a salesman at Beaman Toyota in Nashville, Tennessee, recently spent part of a day searching his lot for a 2018 Camry Hybrid listed on Beaman’s website for just under $27,000.
Carollo’s manager, Billy Carmical, later confirmed they had located the car and reported that the actual mileage is 31,364.