Buying an RV from Dealer vs Private Owner

[rkburdick]

Getting closer to purchasing our first RV. We are looking for a good used unit and have found a few contenders. Not sure how this all works but when I recently spoke to a dealer he told us absolutely do not buy from a private owner for lots of reasons. Since he is a dealer we're not sure if we should trust his opinion. He may be right but I would like to hear from the community. Would appreciate some insight from you all. Also, is it more of a hassle to purchase out of state from either?

[UsualSuspect]

I would buy from either. Based on my experience last year, I found some private parties and most dealers would not give me the real scoop. I would have to go look at it and determine the good, the bad, and the ugly. I was looking at a private party deal, had a mechanic go out and look at it, and he told me before I went out there there was a cracked manifold. He said the seller knew about it, the seller never mentioned it. I went to a dealer and he said they were all in A+ condition, I am guessing he graded on a curve. When you find the rig you want, have it checked out. There are a lot of honest folks out there, but here are also a lot of dishonest ones. You get the fun of weeding them out.

[wny_pat1]

If you buy from a dealer, be very careful it their lips move. The sounds that come out may be very questionable!

[ClassAGeek]

I forgot to mention: For every car I've bought in a private sale, I've sold my car privately too. I have sold more than 40 cars privately over the years. The motivation was always pretty much the same: the few times I asked a dealer for a trade-in quote, I have been shocked at the so-called 'book value'. Selling it myself always resulted in higher proceeds. Every time.

So while I expect to buy a car privately at a significant discount, I know I can also sell my existing vehicle for than I can get from a dealer. How can that be?.

Clearly the answer is: Markup. Dealers want to maximize profit. This means markup on new vehicles and markup for those taken as trades. This practice is not unfair or unjust. It just pays the dealer's bills. To save money, you must remove the dealer middleman.

Disclaimer: I have bought and sold fewer cars since moving to a small town. The number of buyers and sellers just aren't the same as big metropolitan centres. I think this concern is amplified with MHs. There just aren't enough local buyers to go around. As such, I think I will need to sell my current RV on consignment through a dealer when the time is right. It certainly reduces my proceeds but exposes my RV to more buyers. Of course, the buyer is just getting a private sale coach by way of a middleman. I sure wish more RV'ers used Craigslist. That may be the best answer for all of us.

[JTHarley]

I've sold a couple of my old DP over the years and in both instances it was my maintenance log that closed the sale. That is an advantage over dealerships I believe. When I sold my 2006 Vectra, I had 4 years of maintenance and every repair done at the dealership in a nice binder for the prospective buyer to browse thru. Print outs from the freightliner dealer showing average speed, hours ect......really makes a difference.

[RSchleder]

As said in many of the previous posts, it all depends on the honesty and the integrity of the seller. You can, and will, find knowledgable/honest sellers both at Dealerships and private sellers.
We sold out 2005 Allegro Bus privately to a great couple that communicated with me over a period of several months. When they finally bought our coach, he knew as much about our Bus as I did, I told him everything and had well documented records of maintenance since we bought it new. They got a great coach at a fair price and I know they luv it as much as we did.

[vegasfoodguy]

westernrvparkowner wrote:

Elizabeth24 wrote:
We recently purchased from a private sale, we are not new to RVing and did checkout what was available from dealers, but honestly their asking prices were quite high and did not provide much if any after purchase warranty. One other consideration for us was from a private sale - no sales tax, from the dealer, we bought in AZ and are leaving it there, -approx. 10%.

We ended up getting what we are very pleased with, at a price that we were very comfortable with, so to answer your question, private sale was best for us.

Private sales do not exempt the vehicle from paying sales tax. You will pay it when you transfer the title and register the vehicle. Proper research and inspection is the only defense you will have either against a dealer or an individual sale. But remember, a totally dishonest dealer won't last too long and you can do some research and usually find out they are shady, a totally dishonest individual seller has no history to check. Also, the dealer has insurance and you have some protections if the vehicle turns out to have had the miles rolled back or the title isn't good, or if the guy selling it doesn't pay off their loan. With an crooked individual, good luck getting anything but the phone hung up on you.

In Nevada, NO sales tax on private sales.

Terry.

[restorodder]

One thing to think about is, buying from a private party you might get a lot of extras thrown in. We will be selling ours in a few weeks, and thousands of dollars of extra equipment will go to a private sale buyer. If we decide to sell to a dealer, none of that stuff will go with it. I dought if a dealer will give you any of the mainttenance records, tire receits, or instructions for added equipment.

[winnietrey]

Buying private party is a lot more work. You have to drive quite a bit, find your own loan, get lied to on the phone about how great the rig is. And after driving 2 hrs find out it's a hunk of junk. But in the end, I feel if you put in the work and research, one can do very well buying private party vs a dealer.

But many folks, just don't want to put that kind of effort into their purchase

[charles]

I don't know why anyone would be afraid of a private seller. You can purchase an extended warranty for just about anything out there if you're willing to pay for it. When I listed my Winnebago Vista for sale by owner, 90% of the calls I received were from dealer representatives offering low ball prices. I ended up selling it for $19,000.00 more than my best dealer offer and the selling price was $10/15,000.00 lower than I could find listed by any dealer. My buyers got a great unit with absolutely nothing wrong with it at a great price. They were looking at dealer units before they purchased mine. I have never bought a used RV from a dealer and never got burned. There is such a huge savings in buying private that you can't go wrong if you do your homework. I do agree however to check all service records, have it inspected, and run a car fax.

Nick

[soren]

powderman426 wrote:
I know that auto dealers often take cars to auction that they feel could be a problem child. So does anyone know if the same applies to rv dealers, or do they sell them all good or bad off their lot?

Depends on the management. I have seen dealers including at least one Camping World, with absolute trash on their lot. Stuff that only a fool would buy, delaminate that Helen Keller could see, ceilings falling down from leaking etc.... OTOH, we noticed while shopping at the bigger dealers in Florida, that they tended to put the junk out back, and found ways to dispose of it. There appeared to be a secondary market of local smaller shops that refurbished some of the rougher stuff. We stopped at a few that were based in cheap industrial areas, and had a handful of rigs that they had gotten cheap, and fluffed up. Some were good buys, others were carefully polished turds.

[Jackha1949]

We bought our first MH a 05 34H Journey from a private party which I thought I would never do. However, the couple were really nice and honest, the MH was in new condition, and we had an independent mechanic do a total inspection of the unit before we bought it. I highly advise you have a independent mechanic inspect any private party sale before buying, if the seller won't agree to the inspection run! We had the Journey for 3 years when we traded it in for our current MH a 06 Itasca Horizon 40KD. The Journey had two slides and the Horizon has 3 slides with 2 opposing in the living area which gives a lot more living space. We bought the Horizon from a good dealer in Tucson, AZ. The dealer was great with us, gave us a good price and trade, and fixed any problem we found with the MH which was pretty minor. Before we bought our first MH we did tons of research and found an inspection check list which really helped us when looking at MHs. This forum and one on 2irv.com can really answer lots of questions you may have on certain coaches. 2irv does have forums on specific MH companies which is a great place to find info on certain models you maybe interested in. As the saying goes "buyer beware" as there are honest people and dealers as well as dishonest ones as well. Good Luck and Happy Hunting!

[nemo45]

phillyg wrote:
I've done both and think you just have to be as knowledgeable about RVs as possible. Check out each unit thoroughly or if you can't, pay an expert to do so for you. Anything you buy used could break as you're driving it away regardless of how well the dealer or private seller talked it up. The only advantage to a dealer sale I can see is you might get a 30-day 50/50 warranty.

Well its not necessarily true that the only advantage is the warranty. We bought ours from a big dealer in Texas and we stayed there for 7 days transferring all our stuff from our old motorhome to the one we bought, since we are full timer. Both our old and new unit were side by side under a covered structure with full hookups, while we were there During that time, anything we found while were there was fixed, including replacing an a/c unit. We had a technician assigned to our unit to fix anything we asked him to. Also, our gas tank and lp tank were topped off. Since we didn't tow our toad down there with us, they gave us a free loaner to use while we were there, a 2011 Equinox just like the one we tow. Although, it was covered with advertisements for the dealership. We got our Tour Master for $3000 under wholesale. So, we were thrilled with the whole experience and would highly recommend our dealer. There are advantages going either way, but in my opinion if you could find a dealer like ours, that is the way to go.

[Ro646a]

We have bought three motor homes privately and sold two privately. No regrets.

[Altern]

Peralko wrote:
I disagree with the notion you get a better price from a private sale. I've been doing a lot of research on our next coach, and the price asked by private owners are many times way over what I've seen from dealers. Some coach owners who paid a lot of money for their coach are unwilling to realize what their coach is now worth on the market.

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