Travel Trailer Buying/Financing Questions
Hello all, this is my first post here. I’ve been lurking here a while looking for info on campers. I’m looking to buy a TT for the 2020 camping season and I’m trying to plan my finances accordingly....
Forum Discussion
I am going to post somewhat repetitive things to what others have said in response to your second question, but perhaps there's some value in my experiences. Our last two RV purchases were as follows:
1. We were shopping for a TT several years back, and I was looking at dealers over a wide geographic area, communicating with a couple that had the unit we wanted. I had a good feel for what the best price was going to be, and was going to pull the trigger on one about 6 hours away from me. Before doing that, I went to the local RV show, as I knew a local dealer had the exact unit we were interested in (but previously their price was higher than the distant dealer). A factory rep was at the show, and was offering incentives which, combined with what the dealer was offering, providing us a better price than any I'd found to date. So, it's possible you might find some of the better pricing at an RV show.
2. Our current RV (a motorhome) was similar to the process above, in that I found the unit/floorplan we wanted and shopped over a wide area. We were patient, and as it turns out, in December a dealer a few hours from us that I had communicated with previously reached out to me and said they had just dropped the price on the unit we liked significantly. We drove over that weekend and bought it. This was in Dec 2014, and the RV was a 2014 model that had been on the lot for many months. 2015's were out and on the lot, so they were not only incentivized to move the leftover model, but it's possible that being December they had year end motivation to move it as well (I can't prove that, just a possibility).
So I'd suggest you look both at RV shows, and also perhaps try to find leftover units (not so old that you need to worry about things like tires going bad sitting on the lot for 3 years) when the new model year is out. Shopping in December certainly wouldn't hurt either as long as you have timing flexibility, which it sounds like you do.
1. We were shopping for a TT several years back, and I was looking at dealers over a wide geographic area, communicating with a couple that had the unit we wanted. I had a good feel for what the best price was going to be, and was going to pull the trigger on one about 6 hours away from me. Before doing that, I went to the local RV show, as I knew a local dealer had the exact unit we were interested in (but previously their price was higher than the distant dealer). A factory rep was at the show, and was offering incentives which, combined with what the dealer was offering, providing us a better price than any I'd found to date. So, it's possible you might find some of the better pricing at an RV show.
2. Our current RV (a motorhome) was similar to the process above, in that I found the unit/floorplan we wanted and shopped over a wide area. We were patient, and as it turns out, in December a dealer a few hours from us that I had communicated with previously reached out to me and said they had just dropped the price on the unit we liked significantly. We drove over that weekend and bought it. This was in Dec 2014, and the RV was a 2014 model that had been on the lot for many months. 2015's were out and on the lot, so they were not only incentivized to move the leftover model, but it's possible that being December they had year end motivation to move it as well (I can't prove that, just a possibility).
So I'd suggest you look both at RV shows, and also perhaps try to find leftover units (not so old that you need to worry about things like tires going bad sitting on the lot for 3 years) when the new model year is out. Shopping in December certainly wouldn't hurt either as long as you have timing flexibility, which it sounds like you do.
