new or used

4x4ord wrote:

Lantley wrote:

4x4ord wrote:
I figure they depreciate about 12% per year and if I am using it regularly I will want to keep it within about 8 years old. So if I were to start with a $90,000 unit it might be worth about $32,000 in 8 years. So roughly $7200 depreciation per year. If I were to buy a 4 year old unit twice for $54,000 each time and keep each one for 4 years, it might cost me about $44,000 for depreciation over the same 8 year period or $5500 per year. I guess in the whole scheme of things its not a big deal one way or the other.

Agree they all depreciate. Financially it's losing proposition.
New or used the only way to get value is to use it as much as possible. The more you use it the more value you get. If you are looking for an investment an RV is not the place to put your money.
My advice is to pick the one you truly like and keep it a long time.
Good luck with you decision.

What you say makes sense. It also gets me thinking. If I am going to go all out and buy an expensive RV with the intent of keeping it a long time it might be well worth it to build a garage to store it in when it is not being used. The garage shouldn't depreciate and it will allow me to be happy with my purchase for a little longer. So now my question becomes: what makes more sense, replace the fiver every 4 or 5 years or build a garage for it and keep the thing for 8 - 10 years?

That's easy decision for me. 4-5 years is way to short of a period to keep an RV. Especially a high end nice one.
I think one should strive to keep an RV at least 10 years.
A garage will go a long way to keeping that rig really nice the entire time. Nevertheless ten years is my goal with or without a garage.

After 10 years things begin to wear and some refurbishment maybe in order. If the unit is still decent and you like it. You can dump some money into it to make it new again or you can begin to think trade in. Either way 10 years is a reasonable goal.
Just my 2 cents of course