dietDrThunder
Why so serious, son?
This is kinda random, but I wanted to offer some advice for anyone who reads this really great thread and decides to go RV shopping.
RVs depreciate like food, and at MSPR they have massive margins. Never, and I mean never, pay any price that is anywhere remotely close to the sticker price. If you're not 1/3 below MSRP when shopping on a new RV, find a different deal. How do you get that good of a price? Be willing to travel to get your RV. I mean, you're buying the thing ostensibly because you like to travel right?
Seriously...what you want to do is find a couple big RV dealers that are deep in harsh winter country, and start shopping them for leftover new models around the beginning of December. The number one priority of any new vehicle dealership is moving inventory. This goes for cars, motorcycles, RVs, boats...whatever. Well, as winter is setting in, the amount of walk-in traffic, and therefore the number of vehicles sold at this time of year plummets for things like boats and RVs.
Once you've scouted out the dealers, tell them what it is you want in general terms. For example, you might say "I want a toy hauler that is the rear garage style, but I'm towing with a half ton pickup." Then ask them what they might have on special, or have incentives on. Hell, you can come right out and tell them that what you want is a steal of a deal, so let's see the ones you're most motivated to sell. If you're a little flexible, you can really get great deals because every dealer is going to have either one particular brand, or maybe even one specific unit that they're really motivated to sell. Maybe there's one that got special ordered with a weird color stripe that nobody wants, or a left-over that for whatever reason is languishing on the lot. They badly want these kinds of things gone, and they'll do about anything to make it happen.
Example: the last RV I bought was a toy hauler that I needed to facilitate tarvelling to road races with my family. I drove to MI in December to visit family, and on the return drive we heard that the first major winter storm of the year was on the way. I joked with my wife that this would be a great time to buy an RV, since we might be the last customers a place up here would see in 5 months. Not 30 seconds later, we came upon a billboard for a local RV place at the next exit. So, we went. Long story short, we bought a 26' Hobbi hauler. MSRP was $26900 IIRC. We bought it brand new (left over) with a $900 top shelf load leveler hitch setup, the best digital brake controller they had (installed), and about $300 worth of accessories (portable waste tank, etc) for $18,200 out the door. In this case, it was because the Hobbi toy haulers were not the garage style, they were an open floor plan, and while I loved it, it was an unpopular design, so they didn't sell well. I used that trailer for 2.5 years and sold it for $14,000.
On a side note, another good way to find an RV is to buy a used one from an RV enthusiast. Like others have said in this thread, the build quality of pretty much all RVs is absolute shit. But, a knowledgeable owner can and will address the various issues that an RV has by properly upgrading or repairing as needed. A year or three of that, and what you have is a camper that is superior in many ways to how it was the day it rolled out of the factory. It can be pretty tricky to identify RV enthusiasts and the accompanying quality used RVs, so this might be better left to later, when you have more experience with RVs, but it is a really good option. To wit, when I sold my RV it was better in several areas than when I took delivery. Notably, I redid all of the roof seams myself as they should have been done when built, which is to say that I did them as if I actually cared that they didn't leak. I also had replaced shoddy water heater plumbing with a pipe and valves installation that was roughly 57.5x better than the awful job that was done at the factory.
I just wanted to post this because it's easy for the uninitiated to get a bad deal, and to get a bad RV. If you get both that really sucks. My Aunt recently spent $70k on a class A motorhome that in a year has yet to move over 40 miles in one go without having a failure, and I mean that literally. After I learned of this, about 10 minutes of research revealed that this RV a) came with a transmission that is a known disaster and b) the RV was available for around $52k at several dealerships within 250 miles of her home. Both were mistakes that could have been easily avoided.
Hope this helps somebody...
RVs depreciate like food, and at MSPR they have massive margins. Never, and I mean never, pay any price that is anywhere remotely close to the sticker price. If you're not 1/3 below MSRP when shopping on a new RV, find a different deal. How do you get that good of a price? Be willing to travel to get your RV. I mean, you're buying the thing ostensibly because you like to travel right?
Seriously...what you want to do is find a couple big RV dealers that are deep in harsh winter country, and start shopping them for leftover new models around the beginning of December. The number one priority of any new vehicle dealership is moving inventory. This goes for cars, motorcycles, RVs, boats...whatever. Well, as winter is setting in, the amount of walk-in traffic, and therefore the number of vehicles sold at this time of year plummets for things like boats and RVs.
Once you've scouted out the dealers, tell them what it is you want in general terms. For example, you might say "I want a toy hauler that is the rear garage style, but I'm towing with a half ton pickup." Then ask them what they might have on special, or have incentives on. Hell, you can come right out and tell them that what you want is a steal of a deal, so let's see the ones you're most motivated to sell. If you're a little flexible, you can really get great deals because every dealer is going to have either one particular brand, or maybe even one specific unit that they're really motivated to sell. Maybe there's one that got special ordered with a weird color stripe that nobody wants, or a left-over that for whatever reason is languishing on the lot. They badly want these kinds of things gone, and they'll do about anything to make it happen.
Example: the last RV I bought was a toy hauler that I needed to facilitate tarvelling to road races with my family. I drove to MI in December to visit family, and on the return drive we heard that the first major winter storm of the year was on the way. I joked with my wife that this would be a great time to buy an RV, since we might be the last customers a place up here would see in 5 months. Not 30 seconds later, we came upon a billboard for a local RV place at the next exit. So, we went. Long story short, we bought a 26' Hobbi hauler. MSRP was $26900 IIRC. We bought it brand new (left over) with a $900 top shelf load leveler hitch setup, the best digital brake controller they had (installed), and about $300 worth of accessories (portable waste tank, etc) for $18,200 out the door. In this case, it was because the Hobbi toy haulers were not the garage style, they were an open floor plan, and while I loved it, it was an unpopular design, so they didn't sell well. I used that trailer for 2.5 years and sold it for $14,000.
On a side note, another good way to find an RV is to buy a used one from an RV enthusiast. Like others have said in this thread, the build quality of pretty much all RVs is absolute shit. But, a knowledgeable owner can and will address the various issues that an RV has by properly upgrading or repairing as needed. A year or three of that, and what you have is a camper that is superior in many ways to how it was the day it rolled out of the factory. It can be pretty tricky to identify RV enthusiasts and the accompanying quality used RVs, so this might be better left to later, when you have more experience with RVs, but it is a really good option. To wit, when I sold my RV it was better in several areas than when I took delivery. Notably, I redid all of the roof seams myself as they should have been done when built, which is to say that I did them as if I actually cared that they didn't leak. I also had replaced shoddy water heater plumbing with a pipe and valves installation that was roughly 57.5x better than the awful job that was done at the factory.
I just wanted to post this because it's easy for the uninitiated to get a bad deal, and to get a bad RV. If you get both that really sucks. My Aunt recently spent $70k on a class A motorhome that in a year has yet to move over 40 miles in one go without having a failure, and I mean that literally. After I learned of this, about 10 minutes of research revealed that this RV a) came with a transmission that is a known disaster and b) the RV was available for around $52k at several dealerships within 250 miles of her home. Both were mistakes that could have been easily avoided.
Hope this helps somebody...
