March and August are the two most expensive times of year to buy a car according to price trends aggregated from CarMax ($KMX), the world's largest used-car marketplace.
As we enter April, we're nearing the end of this price surge.
While the average price of vehicles at CarMax coasts back to its average, we now take a look at the most common car found at CarMax: the midsize Nissan ($TYO:7201) Altima.
Nissan can also claim the most common compact SUV (Rogue) and the second-most common compact sedan (Sentra) on the used car market... And those are all in the top-five most-listed cars at CarMax.
Make no mistake: the Nissan Altima is the most common used car on the market today
The Altima regularly competes with the Civic, the compact sedan from Honda ($HMC), for the title of the most inventory on CarMax. While the Civic has come close to inching out ahead of the Altima, it hasn't surpassed the number of Nissans on CarMax since at least August 19, 2016.
What, and where, are these Altimas?
The average Altima sold at CarMax is in the $15,000 range and has anywhere from 33,000 to 42,000 miles on it, which is considered the end of the first major part of a typical car's lifecycle, when leases close and warranties expire.
Compared to the Civic and the Toyota ($TM) Camry — the former is the second most common car at CarMax and the latter is the next most common midsized car — the Altima gets sold off CarMax lots most in a two-week span, according to Lookahead data that calculates how long it takes for individual cars to disappear from inventory.
The most common place to buy an Altima is at one of CarMax's superstores: on the Southwest Freeway in Houston.
Make no mistake: the Nissan Altima is the most common used car on the market today. Unfortunately for owners, it's also the most stolen car model out there according to a recent study, so take these statistics with a word of warning.
