Forum Discussion

don_b1's avatar
don_b1
Explorer
Feb 16, 2016

selling on consignment

Due to health issues we might have to give up the lifestyle we have both enjoyed for many years. If it comes time to sell I don't really want to go through the hassle of trying to sell on my own, even though I realize I will most likely lose money. I will eventually call or visit dealers to see and compare their terms and fees. I am wondering, before I get to that stage of the game, if I can get some suggestions or do's and dont's of the procedure so I can proceed with some knowledge. Thank you, Don. P.S. I should have mentioned in my original post that I will be looking, when it is time, for a dealer in eastern Pa, close to my stick house. Thanks for all the replies and suggestions, I am learning.

20 Replies

  • Don..you're not too, too far from Lake Alfred FL near Winter Haven. Our son bought a 5ver from Highway RV in Lake Alfred. We were extremely impressed with how they treated him. They appear to be good people. I think a large portion of their lot is consignments. I'm not positive, though, but you can check that out. If we were to sell, I would consider them for consignment.
  • A PPL requirement is: ''Original title or original registration receipt if you have a lien holder.''

    Thought I saw a comment about NOT leaving vehicle Title at a consignment company.

    Guess they would need it to sell it. Maybe a copy?
  • Yup, just as with most things, all consignment lots (or worse dealers who sell new and also take consignment) are NOT created equal.

    There are good ones and bad ones.

    Yes, PPL and MOT in Texas both have good reputations.
  • I sold mine thru a consignment dealer in WVa. in MD they have to own everything on the lot and couldn't do consignments. I think they charged a certain % instead of a fixed fee. when they sell them they buy them first and theoretically I was out of the picture. when they demo'd it to the buyer it was discovered that I did a poor job of winterizing it and the water heater split. I paid about $200 for the new heater and installation for which they were happy that I was an "honest" man. :)
    bumpy
  • Kayteg1 wrote:
    Consignment did not work for me.
    With dealer having his own units, he will push his units first and in my case they ask for "cleaning" money when they did not sell the unit.

    This being the case, one should probably find a dealer who almost and/or exclusively deals in consignments.
    I think PPL is one such place.
  • I used a local dealer that sells the most RVs in the area. He does some consignment sales but that is not a huge part of his business.
    He charges 10 percent plus a cleaning fee if the unit requires cleaning, but we had our motor home cleaned before we put it on the market so the cleaning fee was not charged.
    We tried to sell it ourselves for about three months with no success.
    He sold it in about a month and got the price we had agreed on - a little over the NADA average retail.
    He took care of the financing and did regional advertising.
  • find a friend or relative that would do this for you, consigned rv,s is not the best route, the dealer will push his units first. and the dealer really doesn,t know any thing about your rv. it just sits on there lot.
  • We had good luck selling our 2008 Monaco Dynasty through Motorhomes of Texas (MOT) in Nacogdoches, TX, in summer of 2014.

    Part of the consignment fee covers a complete detail inside and out. Our coach sold in 90 days.



    MM.
  • It failed miserably for us. The dealer's "pricing specialist" said he'd price it at $28.5K and thought we'd get at least $24K. They agreed to fix a number of small problems once we agreed on what each would cost.

    We never got any quotes on the fixes and the dealer denied ever having agreed.After about 10 weeks, we got a call saying there'd been an offer of $14,500. I reluctantly counter-offered $16K and it was accepted. I got a check for $15.4K, after the agreed seller's fee of $600 was deducted.

    I wrote a really critical review of the transaction, including the name of the dealership, on either this forum or iRV2. A couple of weeks later the owner of the dealership called and said they'd "found some irregularities in the sale" and asked us to stop by.

    The owner confessed that he'd bought the rig himself, fixed up the problems and sold it on. He offered to split the difference from $16K less the cost of the fixes, which he claimed had cost $2.7K to fix. I challenged that by saying he had charged himself the full retail on replacement parts and full labor costs for putting the in, when I was sure he'd got the parts at wholesale and his staff had done the fixes in otherwise slack time.

    After a lot of arguing, we finally settled on an additional payment to us. I agreed not to reveal the cost details, the name of the dealership or of his staff. We were glad to get some of what we were due and it was about what I'd originally expected. It made our 4 seasons' use work out to $4000 a season in depreciation cost from what we'd paid for it originally, which meant we'd paid around $600 per trip just for the depreciation!
  • Consignment did not work for me.
    With dealer having his own units, he will push his units first and in my case they ask for "cleaning" money when they did not sell the unit.