Let me share a rental unit success story. Back in 1999 the wife and I were thinking about getting a motorhome, but didn't know what or when.
One day we were riding our motorcycles through a nice rural area and saw a really nice looking, large class C sitting in front of a house with a for sale sign on it. It looked pretty new and since we were going to pay cash for whatever we bought, I thought it would be out of my price range, but we stopped and looked at it anyway. It looked nice up close, but all it had was a sign with a phone number (and make and year model), but no price. After returning home I got on the internet and looked at it's loan value, etc to figure out what it might be worth. The loan value was about $34,000. It was 4 years old at the time. Just out of curiousity I called to ask the price. "I'd take $12,750 for it" said the seller. He was a car dealer, and had bought it at a dealers auction to take a long family trip in. He had completed the trip and was ready to sell it. It was a former rental (from an independent dealer) and had 54,000 miles on a 460 engine. Everything worked just fine. I rushed back, and after talking to him and getting the story, checked it for flood damage, wreck damage, etc., and bought it on the spot. We have had many, many great trips in it with no major problems.
The real success story is that last year a bad hail storm damaged it cosmetically and the insurance company wrote me a check for a few hundred dollars more than I paid for it in 1999!! It is my project this year. I'm going to fix all the damage and repaint it to look like a new model, hopefully for 3 grand or less and enjoy it for many more years. It has 80k on it and still runs like new.
