Financing a new motorhome

They're not pcp anyway. Hp is of course an option.
Like everything in life, you have the option of paying for them from your own funds or borrowing, there's no 1 way people are paying for anything, be it a motor, a home or a motor home.
80k is not really massive money, a well specced premium car can run to that figure, audis and BMW and merc, and you wouldn't even get a look at their flagship models for under 100k.

Motorhomes to me says older people in general, so maybe pension lump sums and severance packages have something to do with it. My own father bought a brand new van (Opel Movano) and is building one himself at the moment.

I bought mine new in 2005, in the current climate it's worth over 50% of what I paid for it. That's 16 years of travel and holiday accommodation for about 35k. or put another way about €3,000 per year including tax, insurance, servicing and other incidentals.
My current car is an 03 reg Volvo with over 256k miles on the clock.
I'm a firm believer in buying quality and keeping longterm, I'm certainly not a numberplate snob.

Buddy Bubs wrote: »

Motorhomes to me says older people in general, so maybe pension lump sums and severance packages have something to do with it.

Not always! Twenty years ago - so mid-thirties for me - our Volvo 740 estate, with extra rear-facing seats in the boot, was getting a bit tight for space when filled with the Mrs & 4 children & shopping/luggage/Christmas tree/stuff the children collected when out for a walk ...

We looked into buying a new SUV, saw the cost was :eek: and figured out that it wouldn't actually improve our situation very much, as most of our holidays at the time were spent getting to wherever we were going. We realised that logically, it would make more sense to spend the same amount of money on something that had everything including a kitchen sink (we already had a stove, a coolbox and a toilet of sorts in the Volvo).

Fast forward twenty years, the Volvo is parked in the lane out the back; the camper is parked on the lane out the front, most recently used to collect a load of timber from the DIY shop. Second best £45k I ever spent (the best-best was the £45k on the house that we sold to pay for it, and our new house in France)

I have no idea what it's worth now, but it's too useful to sell.

Sir Liamalot wrote: »

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I like machines with no computers, no DPFs and no add blue. That means old time proven.
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The only problem with those kinds of machines is that they are banned from many cities and areas and the list is growing.
Worst still in some countries they are tolled at up to €0.27 per kilometre.

We purchased a second hand one about 10 years ago after getting a bit of inheritance. Normally motor homes are well looked after as they are a bit investment.
I honestly don’t think I could justify paying for a brand new one .. no matter how much I would love one.
Kept it for 2 years and sold it on and purchased a caravan. We actually sold it for same money we purchased it for.
Local garage near to me sells them and I know he does finance if you have a trade in .

We recently took delivery of a brand new VW Grand California, which we've used financing to purchase. For us, it was worth the extra expense of buying new and manufacturer-built because I trust a company like VW to really put extra effort into the engineering and design of such things. Buying used obviously wasn't an option because the used market for Grand Californias doesn't exist yet, otherwise we'd have considered it.

We bought a used, converted VW T5 in the past and had incredible times with it, but there were just a few things here and there that were clearly compromised by the fact that it was post-converted and not built in a certain way from the start. It may even be that VW are doing a kind of post-conversion on already produced Crafters for the GC, but there's a level of access and knowledge there that I just don't think could be matched by a third-party converter.

There's lots of little details that I'm already loving, even though we obviously haven't been able to get away in it yet (picked it up before the VAT increase came in, otherwise we'd have stored it with the dealer for a while) — the built-in fly screens and how they work with the window blinds; the clever space-efficient design of the bathroom; the way the reversing camera is positioned so that a bicycle rack won't block it; the wonderful airplane style luggage cabinet; the ambient lighting; etc.

I'll praise one particular incredibly minor, but representative, detail that I love — there's a rooftop bed, and it has this slide-away design. It's supported on one side by the sliding mechanism, and on the other side there's a separate fold-away support hinge. The detail I love is this — when you slide the roof bed out, something in the internal mechanism causes that fold-away hinge to automatically fold-out, so you never forget about it.

Plus there are certain benefits from buying from an actual commercial manufacturer, which were hard to resist.

Buying new is not for everyone, and you need a fairly hefty deposit, but I think a lot of people write it off too much.

MJohnston wrote: »

We recently took delivery of a brand new VW Grand California, which we've used financing to purchase.

Can I ask what way you financed it? Downpayment? Over 10 years? I would think of doing similar myself in next couple of years

MJohnston wrote: »

Hire Purchase, over 5 years, with just over 10% deposit.

We had the option of PCP too, but because that's limited to 3 years, it was actually a higher monthly payment, and in this case we absolutely want to keep the vehicle at the end, so it'd cost more at the end too.

We're in a (very fortunate) financial position where our assets are likely to grow a good bit more than the percentage we'll pay in interest over the HP period. So it didn't really make sense for us to cash-buy or even increase the deposit amount.

Thanks for the feedback. I feel finance over 5 years would be ball-crushingly expensive every month for me anyway. I wonder do any finance companies do it over longer period here like in UK

MJohnston wrote: »

We recently took delivery of a brand new VW Grand California,

You should definitely do s thread, love.to see it! Did you sell the old van?

killalanerr wrote: »

As a previous posters says if you compare the price of a MH to that of a top end car if your in that sort of price range 80k is not that big of a whack .
Id say a lot of people that buy new have got there over a couple of years, say a 35k initial investment you decide you like this camping lark so after 3 years you upgrade say 7k pa so you have you have another 20k to invest ... you see where I'm going with this ... you do ok with the trade in ,you now have a 50k van and before you know it after a few trades your kicking tyres of a new yoke
not me unfortunately

Do you think lads buying 80k cars are buying them for cash? I bet most of them are PCP with 3% interest or less funded by the manufacture- not an option with motorhomes

For motorhomes I would go the credit union route who will likely give a longer finance option than they would for a car and a reasonable finance rate. They know that unlike a car, an 80k motorhomes isn’t going to shed 50% value in 3 years

covey123 wrote: »

What countries would that include?

GB, France, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Cezchia and Poland for a start. Probably others, but they're the ones that bother me (all but the last two are effectively "home turf" for me)

The hidden costs, unfortunately. There's a big difference, too, between how "small" MHs are treated and bigger ones. Anything over 3m high is prohibitively expensive on Pay As You Go motorways (France, tunnels, etc; not too bad in Austria and Switzerland where it's a flat rate for the week/year); and anything over 3.5t is penalised either by access restrictions or extra per-km tolls (e.g. Austria!)

niloc1951 wrote: »

The only problem with those kinds of machines is that they are banned from many cities and areas and the list is growing.
Worst still in some countries they are tolled at up to €0.27 per kilometre.

covey123 wrote: »

What countries would that include?

CelticRambler wrote: »

GB, France, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Cezchia and Poland for a start. Probably others, but they're the ones that bother me (all but the last two are effectively "home turf" for me)

CelticRambler : could I ask you to clarify something for me, please? What exactly are you saying about those countries? That they have cities where old motorhomes are banned, or that old motorhomes in those countries "are tolled at up to €0.27 per kilometre."

I own an 1994 Hymer with which we've travelled a bit in France, Spain and Portugal. I know that there are some cities with Low Emissions Zones that we can't visit with our van, which is fair enough. We sometimes use toll roads, but I'm not aware that the age of the vehicle or the type of engine had any effect on the tolls that we paid. Are you saying that all of those countries somehow toll our van differently to newer, cleaner vans? (That could possibly be true, I suppose, based on number plate recognition cameras, but this is the first I've heard of it, if so.) I'm genuinely interested, as we will hopefully take the van on the continent again once the restrictions are lifted. Thanks in advance.