Am I nuts?

Its a good idea if you know how to check out the MH before buying. I did this for my married daughter with 2 kids for 5 or 6 years during the summer. I never lost money as I always sold for more than I paid for it. You just have to look for the right deal and check it out thoroughly before buying. But I enjoy buying and selling

With renting though you know your cost going in. With a used purchase which is almost always "as is" you do not know your cost until you sell it. You could buy and face a major repair on your trip costing more than the rental would. Of course you could buy an aftermarket warranty to cover the unforeseen but that opens up another can of worms and is an added expense.
Rent and be done with it enjoy yourself knowing if something goes wrong you can walk away from the rental with no harm no foul

rent gonna be cheaper, six tires on a C will be 2grand.

If you decide to buy, consider buying a used rental unit from a rental co. In most cases, the rental cos. try to maintain their units.

Thanks for all your input. I was looking at buying a 2-3 year old one that hopefully won't need new tires. The other plus of buying, I get to try rv'ing out, work out the bugs. Makes me a little nervous picking up a rental the day before a 2 week trip. I'm totally aware of the risks. The rental fee for for 2 weeks is about $5500. I feel like buying one, using for 6 months, practicing, could I at least break even and sell it for around 5k less than what I paid for it. Thanks again for all the input.

If you do but a used mh you might decide to keep it. Nothing wrong with that.

Udetective wrote:
Taking a cross country trip with a family of 5. I currently don't own an rv, looked at renting one, but was surprised at how much they. My idea, buy a 2-3 old class c rv, use it for 6 months to a year, taking some smaller trips to get use to it. After the cross country trip, sell it. The age my kids are, we would not use it very often at this point in our lives. Obviously I wouldn't be able to sell for what I bought it for, but looking for advice on what class c holds the most value. Am I completely nuts? Thanks!

Renting an RV for a cross country trip will be extremely expensive. Cruise America charges for mileage, not sure about other Rental Companies, so factor that into the equation. I believe Cruise America gives you a 100 mile/day allowance. They charge 35 cents a mile over that.

Depending on the market in your area, I would expect a 2 to 3 year old Class C that is in good condition will not depreciate that much in 1 year if you keep it in good condition. Most likely a 2 to 3 year old RV is not going to need new tires. If it does - we just put new tires on our Class C back in April. For 6 Michelin LX M/S2, mounted, balanced, taxes, fees, etc., it was $1370 and change. That is about the price of a 1 week rental for a family of 7.

I think you would make out better buying a used RV. I also think you might find that you will use it more often than you think. Our kids were 8 and 6 when we bought our Class C. We used it a lot more than we expected. We took lots of day trips with it to the beach and local parks. When gas was $4/gallon, we did a lot of day trips with it since we didn't camp as much.

We also used it for kids sporting. For our daughter's last soccer tournament, we took the motorhome and camped out in the parking lot. We got permission from a town police officer. It was cold the first morning and her teammates appreciated having a place to warm up. It's nice cooking our own food instead of buying greasy concession stand food all weekend.

-Michael

I like the idea, we did something along the same lines. My calculation going in was that if I kept it for 5 years and used it 3 weeks/ year + a weekend getaway every month, I would break even by then.

Our summer road trip ended up being a little longer than expected :-) and will actually Break Even much faster. I also don't expect it to depreciate much more. Either way make sure to have fun!

Try to take into account all taxes,DMV registration, insurance, storage lot costs as applicable when considering buying and selling a newish rig. Balance that against the cost of renting. Have you tried tent camping, motels, etc. Motorhome ownership, maintenance and overall cost and effort involved has a lot of "pros" and some "cons". If both you and your spouse are enthusiastic, and both will "pitch in" that's a definite advantage.

PartyOf Five wrote:
I like the idea, we did something along the same lines. My calculation going in was that if I kept it for 5 years and used it 3 weeks/ year + a weekend getaway every month, I would break even by then.

Our summer road trip ended up being a little longer than expected :-) and will actually Break Even much faster. I also don't expect it to depreciate much more. Either way make sure to have fun!

Can I ask what rv you purchased?