Selling Privately vs Trading

I have sold my previous campers privately.If you can stand the wait to find a buyer you will get more money privately. The dealer wants you to trade up not down. If you would rather get your new unit quicker, trade.
We are in a similar situation. We will be selling our trailer when it comes off the seasonal site in November and down sizing. We will try to sell it privately in the spring and are in no hurry to buy the new smaller unit.

Car, truck or trailer, it is nearly always advantageous to sell privately.

I don’t know how you get taxed in PA but here in MD we pay 6% title tax on the amount paid when we go to get our tags. So if I sold my car or TT privately it would have to be for at least 6% more than the dealer is offering you. If the dealer is offering me $20,000 on a trade, I need to get $21,200 to break even. Just something to keep in mind if it applies to you.

Its almost too late in the season to get any results on a private party sale. If you can hold out till spring, then sell it yourself. But expect to loose at least a third of your original price. Hard negotwting a savy buyer can usually get 30% off of a new one. And that is what your fighting against.

Sell to dealer: Immediate and done with, but will sell at a lower price.
Sell privately: Can be time consuming, but can get a higher selling price.

Sell privately has one other risk: the longer your camper sits for sale, the less in value it becomes. When selling privately, you really are gambling on time.

If you are not in a hurry to purchase that new camper, then start listing it privately now. If it sells quickly, you have all to gain. If it doesn't sell quick, and you are not in a hurry, then you have the luxury of time, but also a depreciation in value the longer you wait.

And then, if you reach the end of your expected time (say 1 year wait) and you still have no private sale, the camper is now even a year older. Take it to the dealership for a trade now, and you'll get even less.

Personally, if the goal is to get a different camper, do the dealer trade, eat the loss and move on. You're done with the frustration and you can get on and enjoy camping.

Too bad about that Outback. You're giving up a darn good trailer!

NADA 32,000+ average retail, 27,000 low retail. Dealer probably trade in value 22,000 aprox wholesale. That's horrible!

We just sold our Keystone Outback 5th wheel on Craigslist. We had it for 5 years and bought it used. The dealer we bought our newer 5th from would only give a trade in of $3,000 less than we wanted. Had it on Craigslist for 2 hours and sold it for $1500 less than we paid for it 5 years earlier. Must have not asked enough for it. Cash sale and easy transaction.

How much value do you place in your time and privacy? That is what trading will save and protect. You might get lucky and the first guy buys at your price. However you may have to wade through dozens of tire kickers, people who cannot get the funds, offers thousands below the dealer's offer, no shows for appointments and so on before a real offer even matches the deal you can get trading.

When trading in my Outback, we were at a camper show. We seen a 5th we liked, made a deal on purchase price, then negotiated trade in. Co. started at a $ figure, and after all was said and done, the trade in price went up $4000. At the time the Outback was only 2 years old. A few weeks later I seen my Outback on their lot for only $2000. more than they gave me. I was happy with the ease of the whole thing, and still use the dealer for parts etc., and I think they keep that in mind also.

We've found that the key to selling a used TT is to keep it clean, or make sure to clean it up, inside and out before showing it. For years we didn't want to go thru the hassle of a private sale and did the trade-in thing. We did it so often that we screwed ourselves and got into deep debt. Once we climbed out of that, we started buying used TT's and fixing them up and using them. I love fixing things and am pretty good at it. Our first used purchase in 2011 was an '85 Wilderness that needed the bathroom floor rebuilt. After a while the DW decided she didn't like making up the bed every nite on the pull out couch so we looked for a TT with a separate bed. So we had to sell the Wilderness. Luckily it was in really good shape externally and internally and almost looked like new. So we shined it up, scrubbed the interior and put it on the market. The first person to look at it was so impressed with how clean it was he bought it. Being sort of the honest type, I tried to tell him what I had to do to it and a couple of little problems it had and he didn't care cause it was so clean. They were going to take it to Florida to a seasonal lot. I pointed out it didn't have an air conditioner, but they didn't care. The next two TT's we fixed and sold, sold quickly for the same reason, also our price was reasonable, usually breaking even or making a little.