Buy or Rent

Absolutely rent first so you can get a "real" idea of the place. In our case we lucked out, I sat down and actually listed what I wanted in our Florida lot, location, access to lakes for boating and fishing, near-by shopping and such, then researched places until I found one, we rented for two seasons and when the owner offered to sell it to us we bought it knowing full well what we were getting. The other factor to me was the fact that Frau Blücher and I retired sorta' young and we planned to "snow-bird" for at least ten+ years (were on year six now) and I figured we would be paying almost the asking price in rent so by owning we'll be able to recover a good chunk of our money when we decide to pack it in and another important aspect is rv properties do change hands and all details are subject to change as our friends found out when their parks went into receivership or bought out by one of those big rv property outfits to see their rents increase substantially, knowing our costs from year to year really helps the bottom line! In our case we own a fairly large landscaped concrete lot with a 12'x10' hurricane rated shed that we leave our cart, grill, and furniture and I strap our pontoon boat down to the concrete so when we go home for the summer I know if we get hit by storms things will be OK. Now mind you this works for us in our situation and might not be the way to go for others but for us so far,,, so good!

Red Green: There's only two things that excite a man, expensive toys and real expensive toys.