Your experience buying your first caravan

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We started with a camper van on loan, ended up buying it, drove it until it gave up the ghost, resorted to camping for a while, loaned a family van, bought that, sold it at profit, found ourselves with some cash to spare, bludgeoned a second hand van dealer down to a bargain price on a spanking coachbuilt van, (£2000) still got it, damp free after 33 years, renovated it once, just about to renovate it for second time, and wouldn't touch a new van with a barge pole!

All the cash saved? We have a small MH as well, a monocoque retaining its resale value very well!

Best piece of advice.....never ever trust a caravan dealer! 

"Best piece of advice.....never ever trust a caravan dealer!"

When we returned to the hobby early last year we decided to buy an older caravan to see if the hobby was still for us. we found, at a dealers a mint 2002 Coachman Amara 530/4 and paid £5299 for it. it came with an awning and the dealer gave us a starter pack so we had nothing else to buy. apart from gas. we quickly found out that we still loved caravans so after looking around in June of this year and and being offered some silly P/X prices went back to the same dealer and paid £14k for our Elddis. we pushed them to £3500 for our old van which at the day of change over they suggested it may have the tiniest bit of damp in the rear top corners. I said so what does that mean then, we've not had it a year yet and bought it from you? 'the relpy was, Oh nothing Sir just showing you ?

Our old van was on their website within days priced at £5699 and sold very quickly.  

Wish I could make money like that

 

I feel for folks coming new into caravans and motorhomes. May be first time in their lives they have a decent sum of money, and looking to spend it on something purely for enjoyment, have some fun. A fair percentage out there looking to buy will not have a clue about build quality, reliability, after sales care, towing weights etc... and are going to fall foul of some less than perfect examples of workmanship and customer care. There are too many heartrending and stressful stories around  for comfort, and whilst the Clubs will try hard to give guidance, they are too closely hand in glove with the Manufacturers and Dealers to be able to offer totally impartial advice.

Same as buying a house or car, do your homework, shop around, make sure it really is what you want, but above all Caveat Emptor......give no one your total trust. And try and pay some if not all by Credit Card as a fall back! Dealers are desperate to sell, so give them hassle, haggle like mad, don't be fobbed off with shoddy goods, and if you can do it with an audience around, all the better! Politely of course. Amazing what you can get if you are dedicated enough. 

Our first caravan was an upgrade from a trailer tent as I was sick of worrying about putting it away wet and having to dry it out. 

I can remember driving through to Harlepool and seeing it one evening in someone's back garden, hooked up with the lights on. We paid around £1000 for it. It served us well for 3 years before we sold it but with hindsight I was very lucky. It could have been a very different story as I didn't really have a clue what I was looking for and I never thought of taking a damp meter.

Twenty years down the line and I'd almost say the fun of buying and running the van has almost gone due to all the worry and cons that can happen coupled with the extra money now involved. Don't get me wrong, I love my motorhome and wouldn't want to live without it, it's a drug that once you get you can't get off easily, but it's not a cheap hobby anymore so care has to be taken with major purchases........or is it me just getting old?? 😂😂

It took us eight months and viewing over 25 to find a good one. We set a budget of £7000 but in the end we found a lovely Swift Challenger for £2700. Ok so it's 17 years old (built 2000) but it's just had a full service and they only found a small patch of damp in one of the front windows which has now been rectified. There were so many that we saw that had been neglected, high damp readings (I managed to get hold of a Protimeter which was worth its weight in gold!), never been serviced, etc, etc. Our 2000 caravan was at least as good as some that were seven or eight years newer. My advice would be to not rule out older caravans. Buy something which has been looked after and try and get hold of a damp meter. The amount we looked at that were being sold as 'damp free' yet had no proof of that and were in fact found to be damp when inspected. Just because it doesn't smell damp, doesn't mean it isn't damp!

(Forgot to add, we mainly looked at private examples and the one we ended up getting was being sold privately.)

Had a day out, there was a dealership behind a garden centre.

Walked round saw the van we thought would suit us, paid our money ( nearly 6k!! ) Used it for 4 trips only to find we got it completely wrong and the layout didn't work for us.

We came to buying ours, a year ago, as complete newbies to caravans after years of tents. The dealer assured us it was bone dry and showed us his "independent" engineer's report, which even as a Newbie I realised wasn't worth the paper it was printed on, with only some readings shown, curiously none round some areas.
Best advice was to get a truly independent engineer of our own, and after his survey, and then parting with 4K the van became ours.

The dealer offered a warranty, and under that we had a replacement window when the front one was de-laminating after a few months. It's taken until quite recently to find that wet which started coming in resulted from his same "independent" engineer's hashed job of installing this. Now our beloved 17yr old van seems properly as dry as it should be, but it's again an independent engineer who's saved the situation.
So I'm a great fan of the older van, just not of our dealer's engineer!

 

DAMP REPORT, and age of tyres should be checked.  If secondhand, can body warranty be transfered - get dealer to do it as part of purchase.

Got my first caravan in 1973 and price and beds (2 adults +2 young children) were the only things I looked at.  We got a Sprite Alpine, no mains electricity, a foot pump for water, gas lighting and a porta potti, but my Cortina could pull it.