Hello everyone. New to the forum. I am about about three years away from retirement and at this point I am in the "investigative" stage of my motor home purchase.I have already read JohnnyT's post of buying an motor home and it was great. I do have a very general question. Never having owned a motor home I pose the following question? (numbers and names are only cited for example purposes)If I decide my budget is 150k (have not settled on a budget yet) would I be better off buying a new motor home that cost 150k (say a Thor) or would I be better off buying a used Prevost that cost 150k? One will obviously be new and the other might be 20 years old. Thanks for the input.

I'm not sure there's always one single correct answer here, but I would take the Prevost over the Thor in this particular case. Five years hence the Thor will be worth maybe $50k or so, and the Prevost will not have depreciated much if any more. The general comfort and overall quality would be better, too.On the other side of the coin, any repairs (particularly chassis repairs) to the more expensive unit would likely be somewhat more costly, and one might well expect some minor and perhaps not so minor age related bits to wear out and need repair or replacement. There are tradeoffs to every decision.If you're new to RVing in general, I would suggest looking for a comparatively inexpensive used motorhome to begin with and have the expectation that you will sell it after a year or two and get something more like what you really want. It's often quite difficult to figure out what things are important to you and what features you care about without having spent some time using and living in an RV. At the very least, consider renting one for a week or two before jumping in the deep end. If you find you don't particularly care for RVing, and some (strange) people don't, it may save you a good bit of money.

lsm wrote:If I decide my budget is 150k (have not settled on a budget yet) would I be better off buying a new motor home that cost 150k (say a Thor) or would I be better off buying a used Prevost that cost 150k? One will obviously be new and the other might be 20 years old. Thanks for the input.150k will get you into a very nice high end coach. I'd not go as high as a Prevost, but stay away from the lower end entry level coaches. they simply don't have the quality built in. and you won't get much of a Prevost for 150kI'd start by targeting 130-150k on "RV trader" and see if there are any hits there that you like.Many times you can find local coaches selling on Craig's List by the owner much cheaper than a dealer.try Craig's list, E-bay, and RVtrader.com to shop around. Dream on top of the budget, but wow

I would go older and better quality. As stated, you do not have to go a Provost. Look at Newmar and Tiffin.

150K should easily get you into a used upper mid level coach which is less than 10 years old. Such as Newmar, Tiffin, Monaco, Holiday Rambler, etc. This is where my money would go.

I agree with the others - I'd look for a not too old higher end used one. When we were buying on a regular bases things were moving fast; full body paint, 4 slides, & Comfort Drive, just to name a few - were all new technology and/or features, so we were buying new.Today it's pretty easy to find a nice used unit with those features, and IMO all of them would be "must haves". Actually since we got them we've stopped shopping. We were buying every 3-5 years, we've owned our current MH almost 10 years now and have no intentions whatsoever of buying again any time soon.

Buying advice | Good Sam Community

32 Replies

Tom_Barb
Explorer
Apr 21, 2017
lsm wrote:

If I decide my budget is 150k (have not settled on a budget yet) would I be better off buying a new motor home that cost 150k (say a Thor) or would I be better off buying a used Prevost that cost 150k? One will obviously be new and the other might be 20 years old. Thanks for the input.

150k will get you into a very nice high end coach. I'd not go as high as a Prevost, but stay away from the lower end entry level coaches. they simply don't have the quality built in. and you won't get much of a Prevost for 150k

I'd start by targeting 130-150k on "RV trader" and see if there are any hits there that you like.

Many times you can find local coaches selling on Craig's List by the owner much cheaper than a dealer.

try Craig's list, E-bay, and RVtrader.com to shop around.
Dream on

top of the budget, but wow
DrewE
Explorer II
Apr 21, 2017
I'm not sure there's always one single correct answer here, but I would take the Prevost over the Thor in this particular case. Five years hence the Thor will be worth maybe $50k or so, and the Prevost will not have depreciated much if any more. The general comfort and overall quality would be better, too.

On the other side of the coin, any repairs (particularly chassis repairs) to the more expensive unit would likely be somewhat more costly, and one might well expect some minor and perhaps not so minor age related bits to wear out and need repair or replacement. There are tradeoffs to every decision.

If you're new to RVing in general, I would suggest looking for a comparatively inexpensive used motorhome to begin with and have the expectation that you will sell it after a year or two and get something more like what you really want. It's often quite difficult to figure out what things are important to you and what features you care about without having spent some time using and living in an RV. At the very least, consider renting one for a week or two before jumping in the deep end. If you find you don't particularly care for RVing, and some (strange) people don't, it may save you a good bit of money.

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Buying advice

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