CarsDirect.com provides complete used car pricing guides to help you make sense of used car prices.

Read on to find out how CarsDirect.com makes it easy to research and buy a car online:

Factors that can affect used car prices:

1. Mileage. In many cases, a used vehicle's value is directly proportional to the number of miles on the odometer. Most vehicles are driven an average of 12,000 miles per year. When shopping used cars, it's typically a good idea to look at models that have only averaged between 10,000 and 12,000 miles per year or less. A used car's value depreciates considerably if it was driven more than 12,000 miles per year.
   
   
2. Maintenance. When shopping used cars, you should insist on receiving all of the maintenance documents for a given vehicle. Naturally, a car that has been serviced regularly will be in better condition than a comparable model that wasn't maintained properly.
   
   
3. Wear and Tear. Most cars and trucks get nicks and scratches over time. It helps if a vehicle has been garaged and washed and waxed regularly.
   
   
4. Salvage Title. Watch out for this red flag; it means that a vehicle was determined to be "totaled" by a previous owners' insurance company, but the owner decided to get it fixed anyway. Salvaged vehicles are significantly more likely to have mechanical and cosmetic problems than vehicles with clean titles. Not surprisingly, used car prices for vehicles with a salvage title are much lower than for clean vehicles. You can make sure a vehicle doesn't have a salvage title by running a Vehicle History Report at AutoCheck.com.

When you browse our used car prices, you'll notice that we provide a high car price and a low car price for each model year of a given vehicle. This is because our used car prices are calculated to take all of the above criteria into account. This not only gives you an idea of what you can afford, but also what you can realistically expect to pay.