Tag: recreational vehicles

New RV Sales or Used RV Sales, Which is Better

You don’t want to pay too much for the next RV that you buy.  It is always better to find good deals and save money at the same time. If you buy a new RV, you are probably going to be paying way more than you need to.  Dealerships have a standard mark up of 40% on everything that they get.  This means that you are going to be likely to have a 40% mark up on any new RV that you buy from a dealership.  This is a steep price to pay, considering that an RV will lose almost 25% of its value during the first year that you own it.  You would be much better off finding a good deal at a used RV sales company.  If you look hard, you can find recreational vehicles that are three or four years old that have hardly ever been used.  These RVs are in like new condition, often with less than one month worth of wear and tear.

But the best part about a used RV is the price.  By buying an RV that is three or four years old, you often end up paying half as much for the RV.  A lot of times these RVs will look, feel and smell new. Your friends and neighbors will still be impressed but you will gain the most benefit because you paid a lot less for your RV.  On top of that, your cost of actually owning the recreational vehicle is going to be cheaper because you will not have to deal with the high rates of depreciation on new units.

There are lots of different types of RVs for sale by owner.  You can find a used RV for sale by owner that is 15 to 20% less than blue book simply by finding someone who is motivated to sell quickly.  This can actually save you a lot of money.  You not only save 50% for buying a used RV, but you can save an additional 10 to 15% when you find someone who is a motivated seller.  There are a lot of reasons why someone would be motivated to sell their RV quickly and these reasons include financial troubles, unemployment, divorce, inheritance, and many other reasons.

Motivated Sellers Will Sell Their Recreational Vehicles for a Cheaper Amount

Not everyone who has an RV for sale by owner is listed in the newspaper, or on the Internet, or even very anxious to sell.  They start out with an asking price that they know is already too high.  They may just be pricing it slightly above bluebook, because they want to make sure that they do not sell their recreational vehicles for less than what they are really worth.  A lot of people are selling because they have to sell.  It makes a huge difference when you try and buy recreational vehicles from someone who doesn’t really want to sell, because you find out that they are not very flexible with their asking price.  In addition, their asking price is probably a lot more than you want to spend anyway.

If you do a good job at finding motivated people who have recreational vehicles for sale, you should have no problem buying a recreational vehicle for 20% less than the blue book value.  I have found a lot of these motor homes for sale.  I used to own an RV consignment business and I would look for people that want to sell quickly.  Most of the time, they don’t do a whole lot of advertising or marketing.  We would consign their recreational vehicle at a low price and then we would market it really well, and eventually sell it close to the book value.  The advantage of doing this is that you could make several thousand dollars with each motor, or used RV that you sold.  In my opinion, the more expensive the motor home and RV was, the more money you could make off of it when you sold it.  They key was to give people more for their RV when it sold than they would get at a recreational vehicle dealer.  A dealership is probably the easiest way to sell an RV, but it is also the most expensive.  Dealers need to have close to 40% mark up on their entire inventory in order to stay in business.  Plus, if they think they can get away with giving you less money, then they certainly will try to do it.  You will probably find better deals when you buy used RVs for sale by owner or if you buy rv repos directly from a bank. It is also great to buy from banks because they are often very motivated to sell quickly.  The bank understands that every day they hold on to a repo rv, it loses them money and so a lot of times they sell these RVs at repo car auctions.