You have traveled the whole world in your recreational vehicle ? It is now time for you to have a break and to go back to a “normal” home ? You might need to sell your RV in order to move on and buy a house. Here is our advice to sell your recreational vehicle and get a good price for it.
You can also check our blog post about buying a recreational vehicle here! We will give you all our advice to find the best deal depending on your budget and needs.
There are multiple websites where you can sell your recreational vehicle to private individuals. Depending on the country you are living in, you can look for a small ads website like Craigslist, Gumtree or Le Bon Coin. You can also find specific Facebook groups to sell your motorhome, van or trailer.
These solutions are used a lot because they are very easy for the owner as well as for the buyer. You can quickly meet each other in order to proceed to the exchange. Since there are more and more vanlifers, you can easily find a buyer on the Internet. Moreover, this solution is totally free for you. You don’t need to pay anything in order to publish your advertisement.
Of course, you can always sell it with the help of a professional salesman. For example, some rental or car companies offer to sell your vehicle for you. By doing so, you don’t have to handle anything but you will have to pay the company for its services.
Finally, if you are old school, you can also publish an advertisement on a specialized magazine. However, these offline media usually have a smaller audience than online supports. You will probably find a buyer faster and more easily on the Internet. Moreover, these offline media will probably ask you to pay something in order to publish your small ad in their newspaper.
We get it: you want to sell your RV at the best price possible. Maybe it will help you to buy a house or another recreational vehicle. No matter what the purpose is, you don’t want to lose too much money compared to the price of the vehicle when you bought it. Moreover, this RV may have a sentimental value which makes it much harder to sell.
The first thing you need to think of is the perceived value of your recreational vehicle. For example, if you are selling a camper van, what is the value of all the improvements you have realized in it ? Remember that the person that will buy your campervan will save a lot of time since it is already furnished. For the same reasons, if you do all the mechanical checks before selling your car, you will help your buyer save time. And time is money, right?
In order to sell it at an interesting price for you, you also need to take care of your advertisement. A lot of people on these small ads websites don’t know how to attract the buyers. The most important thing is the photographs. You must create desire by taking good advantageous pictures. Your text can also be optimized to give all the needed information.
Depending on the background of your recreational vehicle, it might be difficult to evaluate its value. Maybe you have added furniture or your vehicle has some damages. Whatever it is, you probably can’t sell it at the same price you bought it. You will need to adjust it depending on the current condition of your RV. But what is the good price?
The easiest way to evaluate it is to compare it to other small ads. You can check online what are the prices of vehicles similar to yours. You can filter your search with specific criterias (brand, model, color, etc.) so you can have access to ads that match your vehicle. Then, you can calculate an average.
Based on this average, you can then customize your vehicle sale price depending on its own characteristics. You can also think of small arrangements that you can do to increase the price. For example, a fresh coat of paint can change a lot on the perceived value. It won’t cost you a lot but can help you sell your RV faster and at a better price.
The main weakness of these small ads websites is that you can meet a bunch of ill-intentioned people. The most recurring scam is the invalid checks. If a buyer wants to pay you by check, be sure that it is a valid check. Don’t let the buyer take your recreational vehicle without verifying the validity of the check.
To avoid that, you can also ask for a cashier’s check. This solution works with an agency that blocks the necessary amount of money for the payment before the check is given to you. That way you are guaranteed that the check will be valid once you deposit it. However, there are more and more fake cashier’s checks so you need to be cautious with that.
Unfortunately, you have to stay cautious until you have received the payment on your bank account. You can never know who is ill-intentioned, even if the person seems trustworthy. For example, you must not give a copy of your registration document to a potential buyer. This one could use it to do a fraud. If it is necessary, you can give him information orally but never send him written documents.
Other things may be trivial but can have very bad consequences. For example, if the buyer wants to try your recreational vehicle before purchasing it, make sure to go with him in the vehicle. Moreover, do not give him the keys. You have to turn the key yourself and also take it back at the end of the test before getting out of the vehicle. Otherwise, the “buyer” could wait until you leave the car to start and go with your RV.
You want to sell your recreational vehicle in order to buy a new one? You don’t want to end your vanlife and plan to go to a new destination ? Why don’t you exchange your RV? With the community Swap the Road, you can exchange your vehicle with another road tripper from all over the world. You can now travel further, faster and easily.
Our concept is pretty simple: we know how difficult it is to change continents when you are traveling in a recreational vehicle. You have to ship it overseas which is hard and expensive. That is why people usually limit themselves to America, Europe or Australia, for example.
With Swap the Road, we want you to break the limits by traveling the whole world in a recreational vehicle. In order to help you do that, we have built the first community to exchange recreational vehicles. You have a RV in the US? You want to travel to Europe? You can find someone on our website who has a RV in Europe and wants to go to the United States. Perfect match!
You can check how it works here and also ask us any question by contacting us. We can’t wait to meet you! Stay tuned by following us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
That’s it. You have found the perfect owner for your cherished recreational vehicle. It is now time to say goodbye to it. By doing so, you also need to say goodbye to all the memories you have in it. To us, the first thing to do is to take pictures. You want to save the exact appearance of your wheeled-home before selling it. Take a picture of every corner.
Then, it is time to prepare it to be sold. You will need to take off all your personal properties. Of course, you will take back your clothes, your food and all your stuff. But you will also have to take down your decorations like garlands, pictures or plants. Is it a tear we are seeing on your cheek?
As we were saying earlier, you can also do some upgrades before selling it. You may need to paint the walls again or to change the floor. You can also add some furniture to add value to your vehicle. But don’t forget to sell it once you have improved it!
It is now time to make someone happy by giving him or her the chance to live the same amazing adventures that you have experienced in this wheeled-home. You can trust us: he or she will thank you forever for that opportunity.
Sophie and Daniel have temporarily exchanged their converted vehicle for a trip to the other side of the world!
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