If you live up north like me and you can work it out "affordably", it is worth having indoor heated storage. In fact, it could pay for itself. Allow me to elaborate.
We have indoor heated storage for our rig. It is coming up on it's 10th birthday and it actually still smells new inside. The tires are original (don't crucify me for that please) and I don't plan to change them anytime soon. I think the rig now has near 35,000 miles which is not a lot for it's age which means it sits a lot. If I stored it outside, I'd have to replace brake pads and rotors every-other or third year. But with our rig, I have not even loosened one lug nut yet. The rig stays that well preserved. If I was not a hands-on guy and kept our rig outside, I think we would have spent-to-date approximately $25,000 on outdoor storage, 3 sets of tires, 3 brakes jobs, and all the other stuff that degrades and goes bad needing repair from sitting outside. Sun, rain, snow, sub-zero freezes, tires in puddles, ground moisture, rodents, all combined are brutal on a motor home. Hopefully you'll never have storm or hail damage, vandalism/break-in/theft, or a storage neighbor accidentally damaging your rig.
So do the rough math. $25,000/10 years = $2,500/year in savings by storing our Phoenix Cruiser at home in our garage. So it seems you could break even by paying $2,500 a year for indoor storage for 12 months a year.
Then add in the "reliability factor". We have less trouble than most others. Actually we have never had any trouble with our rig when using it except once needing a new chassis battery.
Then there is the resale value of a perfectly preserved rig. People who don't know us well enough and come by to visit us, they think we just bought it.
Here is our rig at home. The past week here it has been unseasonably warm in January, very damp & humid outside which makes it damp inside the garage. Being that warm outside, I crank up the garage heater to 70 degrees which dries out the room keeping everything inside in good condition. When it gets real cold, I will lower the temp to around 58.
Look around for local commercial buildings in your area offering indoor heated storage. With our new president promising to turn things around, vacant buildings might get scarce (I sure hope so) but for now they are everywhere.....at least they are abundant here in the Chicago n/w suburbs.
