I'm a newbie here, wife and I got back into camping after 10 years. Our experience was...
No dealers in our area, nearest is 80 miles away. We started out picking out several brand name units with floorplans we liked. We were leaning toward Forest River Lexington's, Winnie Aspect, Coachman Concord's, ect. Went on RV Trader and found hundreds of new units, all "discounted" from the msrp, and still there were substantial differences in price between dealers on the same unit. Looked at a lot of used units, criteria being no more than 2 years old with low milage, both from dealers and private owners.
You will be shocked when you see how much a 1-2 year old unit depreciates--much worse than a car/truck. Many we looked at had 3,4,5 thousand miles on them, bearly broken in. We found a private owner 250 miles away selling a 2012 Forest River 283ts with only 1510 miles on it. They had gone from a 5th wheel to this, paid cash, used it one time and didn't like it. It was garaged with many upgrades, even a $1000.00 Roadmaster Sterling hitch. MSRP was right at $100,000.00, he had paid $84,000.00. His asking price is so low I don't want to say, but we went to see it, and immediately bought it.
What I'm getting at is that there are some real deals/bargins out there, you just have to search. Don't be in such a rush to buy new. Keep your options open and don't buy on impulse. Make an offer even if it seems low even to you. We looked on the Trader for 2 months solid, getting to know prices/options/availability ect. before buying. Even made some low-ball offers via internet. Had two that didn't take the offer, but 2 weeks later accepted , but by than we'd found our "jewel"
Grumpy
