Anyone rent out their camper?

This isn't the first time I've seen this question and it always strikes my funny/ironic bone. Isn't one of the major reasons why people RV and don't stay in hotels is so they are the only ones sleeping in the bed? Just sayin'.

There are hundreds of threads here on this topic.
Bottom line is at least 90% would never do it. Many would not let family or friends use their RV.

Having owned an RV rental business for a few years, I would NEVER rent my personal RV. Rv rentals is a business. If you need to supplement your income then RV'ing was never for you to start with. You're better off selling an RV for a loss than renting it, suffering abuse, shortening it's lifespan and dealing with accelerated depreciation far worse than what you got on a sale short of the loan. People that rent anything - including Rv's, simply do not care about the property they are renting. Add ignorance to the mix and it becomes a mess fast. The abuse, damage and depreciation is amazing. I could go on about torn off awnings, torn off bin doors, smashed in skylights, septic damaged from beer cans - it's amazing what people do to other people's stuff. If you have any emotional attachment to your RV at all, do yourself a favor and don't ever rent it. You want to do RV rentals, start an LLC, buy units under a business loan and do it the right way.

I can't recall ever knowing anyone who said, "We did it, and it was fantastic."

One of our former best camping pals is a small business owner in the trades, and when times got tough in '08 he started renting out his Class A. He said it was never the same.

Not only was it never available when he wanted to use it, but it kept getting trashed, over and over. The rental agency was always able to charge back the repairs and loss of use to the renters, and they always repaired the major items, there were little things that were never detected by the agency and it just wasn't ever right again.

He finally stopped renting it out and spent a bunch of time and money to put it back right, but his beloved RV kind of lost its mojo after that, and we haven't been able to get him to come back out on any good trips with us in years.

On the other hand...

Two of our kids went to university up in Wyoming, and the little town of Laramie never could quite keep up with the rush of college parents coming to visit at graduation. There was a mixup with the grad dates (graduating in May instead of later in the Winter semester), so we were way too late to get a room within a hundred miles of Laramie, so we flew up to Denver and rented a Class C south of town and then drove it up to Laramie and parked it outside of our kid's house and had an amazing time being that close to the house and all the friends, party, etc.

The Class C was plated in New York and I asked the rental agency about it. They said that the owners would fly out once or twice a year to use their RV and travel around the Rockies, and then they would park it and rent it out the rest of the year. It was in good enough shape for our use, but it didn't have anything in it (bare bones dishes, etc.). We didn't cook in it, but we had to scramble to find some bedding to sleep in it. It suited our needs as a small mobile motel room. We would have had to bring all our own gear if we were camping, but I suppose that's fair enough.

So from my observations, if your friends intend to use their trailer very much for themselves, then they're not going to be very happy. But if they only want to use it once or twice a year and don't need to keep it very homey for themselves, then they might be able to make it work. It will never really be "theirs" though. It's more of a tax deduction than a useable RV.

How much of that $2000 do they pocket after insurance, wear & tear, management fees, etc...?

Does she get a commission from the company for sucking new people into the system?

If it was legitimately making $2000/month profit, I would jump on it in a heartbeat...heck I'd probably go out and buy 4-5 more trailers. That's $24k/yr. I could buy a new $24k trailer, rent if for a year then sell for say $15-20k at the end of the year as pure profit. If renters destroy it, the insurance would cover it.

Why wouldn't the rental company managing it, simply buy their own units and maximize profits?

This falls under, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably does.

imq707s wrote:
To me the idea seems crazy, but there is a lady that my wife works with that rents out her camper through one of those rental places. Apparently, she told my wife that with their 24ft bumper pull camper, on average they make around $2,000 a month by renting it out to people.
I’m sure there are extra insurance fees, repairs, and other things that come out of your profit.
I don’t think I could ever be ok with strangers towing my camper behind their vehicle, which may or may not be rated to tow it, by someone who may or may not have ever towed anything before, and could care less about beating it up and damaging it. It just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Does anyone have personal experience it this? Is it as bad as it sounds? There are some many little things I have to do with my camper as far as towing it, setting it up, using the heater/fridge/stove/oven…..having someone with no experience just hook up to it at take off down the road would scare the hell out of me.

Ask yourself if you are willing to "rent out" your DW? I wouldn't with my DW.

While you "might" get $2,000 a month in "rental fees", you WILL end up SPENDING much more than $2,000 in REPAIRS AND CLEANING per month.

Have you ever heard the statement "drive it like you stole it"?

No truer words describes what typically happens with rental anything.

I have on several occasions rented some tools from a tool rental shop for "one off" repairs. The tools I rented were beat to tar, missing parts and nearly non functional. The lesson learned was I may as well buy a new tool and not have to fix the rental tool or make parts for the rental tool. Wasted a lot of time and risked creating expensive damage to the parts I was repairing by using worn out, damaged rental tools.

I would recommend you watch the movie "RV" with Robin Williams to get some idea of what possibly can go wrong with renting your RV (yes, the movie is an extreme "take" on the rental aspect but I would bet a lot of what happens IS true life)..

And for the record, I will not ever rent out my RV, my vehicles, my house, my tractor, my stereos or anything else I own.. If you value your RV, don't be tempted to try to recover money from it buy renting it out, you WILL be on the losing end of the stick.

I doubt greatly a claim to be grossing $2000 a month renting a 24 foot bumper pull. If true why doesn’t the lady buy ten more 24 footers?

Never!

Bed Bugs are another consideration when renting out your RV. :E

Grossing $2000.00 a month is not an unreasonable figure. A RV will rent for at least a conservative $100.00 a day. Rent it for An entire month or 30 days produces $3000.00. rent it for 3 out of 4 weeks give you $2K.
The question is $2K gross enough to turn a profit after expenses?