The answer might vary for different regions but, luckily for us, our search was simple once we started looking in the right place.
At first, we looked online with Kijiji and similar tools. While we did find plenty of options, the market seemed very rough. There were a lot of very old buses at what seemed like very high prices. Most of these buses had been sitting in fields not running for years and would likely be a money pit nightmare to get back on the road. It was discouraging to say the least.
Next, we moved our search to the local school bus depots. The ones that handle the buses for our local school boards. It was here that we struck gold in both our bus and knowledge.
Not only did we get a great bus for about a third of the cost of other options, it was in great shape and needed only one small fix to pass a safety. Other depots quoted us thousands to safety their buses, on top of their higher prices.
What lead us to get such a great deal on our bus is that by law, in our region, they must retire a bus after 13 years of service. This leads to a higher turnover in buses for the depots and a lower value for the buses being retired. We even had our choice of model and were able to pick out the better one.
To add to this already sweet deal, these buses are held to very high maintenance schedules, which keeps them in much better shape. Ours was in such great shape that we just needed a new parking brake pad to pass our safety!