“During the pandemic lockdowns, one of the few things people could still do was take a drive, and clearly many of them did,” said Karl Brauer, an executive analyst with iSeeCars. “This drove up the mileage across the used car market, but the supply of new and used cars was so constricted that the additional mileage didn’t hurt used car prices — they still went up.”
Back in 2019, the average number of miles on a late-model vehicle selling for under $20,000 was 43,541. This year, it was 63,457. On average, consumers have been willing to pay 47.7% more to get a vehicle with nearly 46% more miles than was the case in 2019. To conduct its study, iSeeCars looked at 10.8 million used vehicles sold between January and July of 2019 and the same period in 2023. The sales involved late-model vehicles, defined as those between one and five years old.
Nationally, a used Ram 1500 saw the biggest gain in its average sales price, 56.9%, between 2019 and 2023. Toyota Corolla and Camry prices rose by nearly half. Honda Civics were costing 46.6% more and the GMC Sierra 1500 was up 44.1%. Of the top 10 models with the biggest gains, half were SUVs or trucks.
In metro Denver, a different pattern played out. Rather than bidding up the Ram 1500, the biggest price increases among used vehicles in metro Denver came for the Toyota Camry, which went from an average price in 2019 of $16,516 to $25,210, a 52.6% gain. That was followed by the Honda Civic, up 44.2%; the Toyota Corolla, up 43.1%; the Honda Accord, up 41.5%; and the Hyundai Elantra, up 35.9%.