Half of all used BMW 3 Seriess sell within 38 days, against an all-vehicle median of 38 days — that is 0 days slower than the typical vehicle on an independent lot. A quarter move in under 15 days and a quarter take more than 81 — that spread is the part worth planning around.
median
sells in
the sample
miles
By model year
Age and turn time are not the straight line most dealers assume. The 2011 moves fastest at 31 days, while the 2019 sits for 57.5.
| Model year | Median days | Sales | Avg miles |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 BMW 3 Series | 38 | 45 | 38,819 |
| 2021 BMW 3 Series | 33.5 | 88 | 46,177 |
| 2020 BMW 3 Series | 36 | 109 | 62,714 |
| 2019 BMW 3 Series | 57.5 | 54 | 70,915 |
| 2018 BMW 3 Series | 43 | 109 | 74,236 |
| 2017 BMW 3 Series | 45 | 105 | 86,814 |
| 2016 BMW 3 Series | 38 | 104 | 97,632 |
| 2015 BMW 3 Series | 38 | 127 | 100,021 |
| 2014 BMW 3 Series | 38 | 123 | 104,268 |
| 2013 BMW 3 Series | 32 | 112 | 106,251 |
| 2011 BMW 3 Series | 31 | 125 | 109,397 |
Model years with at least 40 recorded sales. Days on lot is the calendar gap between inventory entry and sale date.
Methodology
Days on lot is the number of calendar days between a vehicle being added to a dealership's inventory and its recorded sale date. That clock starts at intake, so on units that need work it includes reconditioning time. We exclude vehicles with no entry date, sales recorded before the entry date, and anything over 730 days — those are data-entry artifacts, not slow-moving inventory.
We report the median, not the average. Turn time has a long right tail: a handful of units that sit for a year or more drag the mean well above what a normal car does. Across every vehicle we track, the mean is 66.7 days while the median is 38. The median answers the question a dealer is actually asking, and the quartiles show the spread around it.
These figures come from aggregated, de-identified activity across independent dealerships that use AutoRaptor. We report only totals across many dealerships, never an individual dealership's results. No customer records, buyer information or dealership names are included.
We publish a model only at 150 or more sales, and a model year only at 40 or more. We do not publish gross profit figures, because the price fields in our data are incomplete and any margin we reported would be wrong.