I want to buy a Mazda van but what's considered the average price? I'm seeing lots of cheap listings that seem to good to be true?

GF: BS. My 91 went 125K , woulda gone 300K  IF I did not crash. CR/CD does NOT indicate any premature  failures with Mazdas.

There's not much demand for used Mazda5's.  Low demand = low prices.  It's no different than any used car - make sure it's in good running order (have YOUR shop inspect it before deciding to buy) and if you find one in good condition they're a good value for something with 6 seats if you don't want a big van/SUV.  And you can get them with a manual transmission (which is unique) if that's your sort of thing.

The average price is not known because nobody tracks that data. 

According to the CarGuru's website...

2004 to 2006 MAZDA MPV's retail at around $3000 TO $4000

2007 to 2009 MAZDA 5's retail at around $4000 to $7000.

2010 and newer are usually $7000 to $10,000

Yes, some may sell cheaper but I'd expect either a salvage title or really high mileage.

First, there's a thing call NADA and there's a thing called Kelly Blue Book. They are on the web. Kelly Blue Book is kbb.com. On that site, you can put the model and year to find out how much that car actually sells for. If you're really interested in a car, when you write down the contact information, write down its VIN, a long series of letters and numbers visible by looking through the front windshield on the driver's side right where the window meets the dash. You can type that VIN into kbb.com and it will know exactly what model, engine, options, everything it has instead of you trying to guess or take anyone's word for it.

Mazda is a Japanese car company that was bought out by Ford. Ford owns Mazda. In fact, many Fords, like Ford Escorts and Ford Rangers, are actually Mazdas with a Ford logo slapped on. What's more, while Fords's subsidiary Mazda is still based in Japan, they're no longer exclusively made in Japan, many being assembled in Mexico and the US. 

Like Ford, Mazda is mid-level. Compared to Toyota and Honda, Mazda doesn't hold its value quite as well, but I'm not sure that has so much to do with quality but more to do with its association with Ford. Mazdas do hold there value a better Isuzu or Mitsubishi, which are also Japanese brands, and a far cry better than Korean brands, like Kia and Hyundai. 

Mazda has been a brand sold fairly popularly in the United States for around 35 years and has earned a reputation for being reliable, a better reputation than its parent Ford. But because Mazda is mostly known as an economy brand, they don't hold their value quite as well as they probably should, not as well as Toyota or Honda, for example. Still, they are known for being reliable cars that drive for a very long time with few repairs that are relatively inexpensive, so while they should probably have better than average depreciation, their depreciation nevertheless holds at about average.

So if you see a deal on Mazda that seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Caveat emptor, my friend. Right now, mileage fraud is a huge problem, more than ever before, because there are so many gadgets out there that let you hack into a car's computer and turn back the miles. Before odometers were digital, it was actually a lot harder to do. Now, you can get apps and devices for $100 that will let you plug into your car's computer and set the mileage at whatever you like. 

That's why CARFAX reports have becomes such a big deal, because the mileage a car shows is recorded by dealerships every time it does maintenance (even oil changes) or does a repair, by insurance companies every time it insures a car or has a claim, and by DMVs every time a car changes hands, and all of those reports show up on a CARFAX report, so if the car your looking at says it has 80,105 miles but the CARFAX report shows reports that it had $700 of body work done from an insurance claim at 93,032 miles and received several oil changes ranging from 83,389 miles through 198,323 mile and its last owner said it sold with 207,383 miles, you know they've hacked the odometer. 

Sometimes, though, people do it who know to not turn it back to a mileage before the last time it was sold and who have made a point to check the CARFAX and make sure they're buying it from someone who nerve had an insurance claim on it and didn't take it to a dealership for service or repairs but had all that done by non-dealers, by local shops, and then they convince the seller or pay the seller to only sign the title but not fill in anything else, like the date or the mileage. That way, they then hack the odometer, turn back the miles to as far back as they can that won't conflict with the CARFAX report, which can easily be more than 100,000 miles, and then they sell the car like a private owner, like they're the person who sold the car to them. So when you buy it from them, they're filling in the date and the falsified miles but the signature isn't theirs but who they got it from. You pay them, and you actually don't know who they are or even where they actually live, as they meet you where they've got the car sitting somewhere along the road or they say they'll come meet you at your house.

So, remember that VIN you wrote down to find out how much it's worth, well you can use it to get a CARFAX. Now, unlike kbb.com, carfax.com costs I think $30 for a one-month membership, but if you're in the market for a car, it's money well-spent. It will potentially save you from losing hundreds or thousands of dollars to a fraudster, and in the used car market, fraudsters who make it their business to procure cars and dial back their mileage to charge you way more than they're actually worth have become easily as common or even more common than honest sellers.

RED FLAGS:

The first huge red flag for this kind of fraud are no service records. Car owners keep all their service records, usually in the glove compartment. If you open the glove compartment and find no receipts for oil changes, tire changes, the odd head light replacement, you need to immediately ask for them. If they say they don't have them or didn't keep them, walk away. Nobody does that. They'll try to give you some excuse like they got stolen out of their glove compartment or they kept them in a file at home and there was a fire or whatever. Don't believe them. Nobody loses ALL of their service records, and if for some reason they did, when they went to sell the car, they'd go to the oil change place they always go to and ask them to print out their service history, because oil change places do keep track. And they'd go to where they get their tires an ask them to print out their service history, because they keep track, too. If they're coming to you empty-handed or only with records that are years old from when the car had fewer miles than it shows, plug your ears to anything else they say and just walk away.

The second huge red flag is if the car has absurdly low miles, like less than 10,000 miles a year. These cars do exist, but they're very rare, and when you come upon one, you can tell because the car still looks and drives like it's that new. So walk away if you see the interior is more worn out or beat up than you'd expect, there's more body wear (like rust, minor dents and dings, and paint fading) than you'd expect on a car driven that little (and really look, including at the undercarriage and inside the wheel wells, especially for rust that shouldn't be there if it was driven so little), and/or when you look under the hood, you see signs of engine wear (like oil build-up on the block or tattered belts and hoses) that do not match what you'd expect for those low mileage OR, and this one's huge, a highly cleaned and polished engine compartment where everything's **** and span as that's something swindlers do to make an engine look not as old as it is and something some regular honest Joe just selling their used car doesn't ever do because the only reason for that is to make it look better than it is. Again, they'll have excuses, like they had kids who were rough on the interior or a wife who was never careful about parking it while guaranteeing you that it's otherwise good as new. Plug your ears and walk away. Also, walk away if the car doesn't drive like it only has that low of miles on it. A car with 70,000 miles drives a lot differently than a car with 140,000 or 210,000 miles, like the steering doesn't feel as tight and responsive like a newer car should, the steering wheel doesn't sit level when you're driving straight down the road, like it pulling right or left when you let go of the wheel instead of continuing on straight, like its engine knocks or taps, like its suspension rattles going over bumps, or like it starts to shake at highway speeds or shake when you apply the brakes slowing down from highway speeds, all of which are uncharacteristic of cars with low miles. Commenting on these things will either get them refusing to acknowledge it, like they don't notice its steering is loose or they can't hear that noise, or they'll come up with excuses and promises, like its just that its due for its routine alignment that they promise you can get some place they name for only $39 and they'd have done it but they've been swamped lately and just hadn't gotten to it or like that knock in the engine is just because they drive it so little the gas is a little old but once fresh gas is in, it'll be fine. Again, plug your ears and walk away. If you stick around and listen to them, they'll end up selling you a car with tens or even hundreds of thousands of miles more on it than they claim, and what they've made look like a cheap price for the miles, which is to try and make you overly eager and hasty and quick to overlook or dismiss things you shouldn't, is actually charging you far more than the car is worth.

Mazda engines are prone to failure around 100k or even less.