Trade-in sweet spot

[Hemling]

Is there a rule of thumb for when it is considered 'best' to trade in your TT for a new one? A certain age range, percentage paid off. . . etc? We have a 4 1/2 year old unit (bought new) and will be going FW *sometime in the future, just wondering if there are any do's and dont's that can get us the best value when the time is right.

[philh]

sell it RIGHT NOW!!!

Market is so freaking screwed up it's crazy. After two years, we got almost what we paid for it, and it was sold through a dealer on consignment.

[MitchF150]

Yes, I forgot about that! Even more of a score then! 🙂

Mitch

[rjstractor]

MitchF150 wrote:
I traded a 2003 Prowler Lynx TT that I bought brand new back in 2002 for $14k out the door. Used it every year since then and never had any major repairs.. Just the usual little stuff and wear items. It was a great little trailer.

Summer of 2019, we start thinking about a new rig. Truck just got paid off and the TT was paid off a decade earlier..

Find our local RV dealer about 3 miles away had the exact model and floorplan we wanted and worked out a deal.

They offered me $6500 trade in for the Prowler, sight unseen! I was only expecting around $3000.. I would have taken that too! I did NOT wish to go thru the hassle of trying to private sell the thing... Just too many ding-dongs out there!

Anyway, trading worked out well for me. I cleaned up the Prowler and looked **** good for a 16 year old TT and I found out they sold it 1 week later for $9000!! Didn't bother me a bit.. I was just glad all I had to do was clean it up (which I would have had to do anyway) and then just sign the title and them putting $6500 trade in value on the new trailers invoice!

Plus the $5000 additional I put down, made the bottom line and loan amount a great deal for me.

Good luck! Mitch

And on top of that you saved about $650 in sales tax since you only pay tax on the difference in sales vs trade in price.

[Gdetrailer]

Hemling wrote:
Thanks for all your input. The situation we are in is that we will be transitioning to a FW but first need to get the truck. Right now I am towing with a Ford Excursion. The plan is to get the right truck in 2-3 years, continue towing my current TT with the new(er) truck for a few years, then get a FW. We may well have our current TT for five more years, making it about 10 years old I'm thinking when we make the changeover to FW. So this is all really advance planning. By then, I won't owe much at all on the unit.

Your current TT should have been paid off by now, not in 5 more yrs, you have lost thousands in interest alone not to mention the normal depreciation. In 5 more yrs that TT will be worth $4K if you are lucky or less and won't be all that interesting to a dealer to take on a trade.

Paying down a loan is not hard to do and doesn't require doubling the payment. You can simply apply extra money towards the Principle (what you borrowed), some banks will apply extra money to the next months Principal and interest payment so you should specify how the extra money is to be applied.

I would recommend that you look up loan or mortgage amortization calculators. Find one that allows you to apply extra to the principal which allows you to play with how much extra to apply to cut down on the length of the loan..

Here is an example of a typical 10 yr loan.



That loan if done as 5 yr..



$3K difference in interest paid..

Much of the first half of a loan you are paying mainly interest and a small amount of the payment goes towards the Principal.. Note where the intersection of the Principal balance vs interest meets..

That calculator unfortunately didn't offer optional extra payment to principal.

You will notice there is a difference of $164.62 in payment between 10yr and 5 yr loan. Paying less than half of that $164.62 (say $50?) extra towards the Principal every month will result in paying the 10 yr loan off in 5yrs or less and save you more than $3K in interest.

It is never too late to apply extra money, you could start now and shave a yr or 2 off the loan and get your life going much faster..

[MitchF150]

I traded a 2003 Prowler Lynx TT that I bought brand new back in 2002 for $14k out the door. Used it every year since then and never had any major repairs.. Just the usual little stuff and wear items. It was a great little trailer.

Summer of 2019, we start thinking about a new rig. Truck just got paid off and the TT was paid off a decade earlier..

Find our local RV dealer about 3 miles away had the exact model and floorplan we wanted and worked out a deal.

They offered me $6500 trade in for the Prowler, sight unseen! I was only expecting around $3000.. I would have taken that too! I did NOT wish to go thru the hassle of trying to private sell the thing... Just too many ding-dongs out there!

Anyway, trading worked out well for me. I cleaned up the Prowler and looked **** good for a 16 year old TT and I found out they sold it 1 week later for $9000!! Didn't bother me a bit.. I was just glad all I had to do was clean it up (which I would have had to do anyway) and then just sign the title and them putting $6500 trade in value on the new trailers invoice!

Plus the $5000 additional I put down, made the bottom line and loan amount a great deal for me.

Good luck! Mitch

[Hemling]

Thanks for all your input. The situation we are in is that we will be transitioning to a FW but first need to get the truck. Right now I am towing with a Ford Excursion. The plan is to get the right truck in 2-3 years, continue towing my current TT with the new(er) truck for a few years, then get a FW. We may well have our current TT for five more years, making it about 10 years old I'm thinking when we make the changeover to FW. So this is all really advance planning. By then, I won't owe much at all on the unit.

[mr_andyj]

The rule has always been you lose a huge chunk of the value just driving a new unit off the lot.
The rule is it cost nothing to keep it another year, but cost the price of the new unit minus the old to get another one.
In this RV-hungry market you can just sell it yourself, trade-in would lose you more money unless you can burn money and are just that incapable of selling something.
It is always cheaper to hang on to it another year, then another year, until you HAVE to sell it.
Unless the layout is just wrong and you are not enjoying it, keep it.
The sweet spot for trade-in is to trade it in at the very last moment that the dealership will take it for its age.

[valhalla360]

The sweet spot is when maintenance starts costing more than replacement.

At 4-5yrs, that shouldn't be an issue if you have kept up on maintenance. Assuming you maintained it, I would say somewhere around 20yr. At that point the roof is likely in need of replacement and the rig is probably worth less than the cost of a new roof.

If you are looking to get something different...the sweet spot really doesn't come into play.

[Lynnmor]

It is better to forget the trade in and sell it outright.

[Sagebrush]

If you wait too long, they loose most of their value. That loss varies on the specific model and condition. At that age its depreciated a good bit now. They really drop once you can't get a bank to loan on them anymore.