My experience trying to buy a motorhome

Ok, here are my thoughts, first of all you are shopping during prime summer travel season, if you wait another month prices will likely start dropping. Also you tend to get a lot more bang for your buck on used motorhomes with private sellers. Most dealers have no maintenance history on used motorhome they sell, and don't care to take the time or effort to inspect them, much less fix anything (see tires mentioned above). As to the budget, it can be done, but short motorhomes are in demand these days, so they don't stay on the market long. I bought my 2002 Safari Trek 28 ft class A last November after 5 or so months of serious shopping for just over $20,000 from a private seller on craigslist, yes you must wade through lots of scammers, (initial asking was $25,000) with 74,000 miles on it, in what I consider overall good to very good condition (though this has not stopped me from spending another $4,500+ on maintenance and upgrades, including $650 to get the dash air conditioner working right, $650 on new shocks, down to numerous $5-$10 items, just today I installed $200 worth of new spark plugs and spark plug wires) of course it was 1,100 miles away for retrieval cost added another $1,200 or so, half of which was airfare. As to your $250 report, I would not expect much more detail for the price, a proper RV inspection should take 8-10 hours or longer to just check all the basic stuff, much less write up a detailed report even on a small coach, typical RV repair shop rates run in the $100 per hour range, though you can find inspection services for less $$$ per hour.