My family owns an RV business and a campground and has for 30+ years. Around 85% of the RVs are purchased with a loan. Some people use them all the time others spend $35000+ plus have a seasonal spot that they spend $3000+ on rent a year and they are there a couple weekends a year. I live in northern Minnesota so buying a camper and renting a spot on a lake is still much cheaper than buying a lake home. However, if you don't use it whats the point!
We have been into RVing for almost two decades now. I never borrowed a dime for one and never will. Our latest rig is eleven years old. we bought it at seven, and paid about 30% of the cost of a similar new one. Since then I flipped the interior for about $2K and had the exterior repainted. All in, still a tiny fraction of new, and it's looks and runs new. The most mind blowing part of the whole game are the fools who borrow big bucks for RVs and a take a TWENTY year mortgage on a vehicle that is essentially worthless in twenty years, and end up with a loan that is upside down for a significant portion of the payment cycle. While shopping for a well priced, nice used motorhome, I continually had conversations with owners that went like this. "well, your motorhome is really nice, and just what we want, however, you are about ten grand over book value, so how much are you willing to come down?" The reply was typically, "Well that's what we owe at the moment, so I can't really take less". Now this is mind blowing for many reasons, like they have been paying for the stupid thing for 10-12 years and are STILL ten grand upside down! Next, they are on such shaky financial ground that they can't dig themselves out by filling the gap from savings. Third, they truly believe that a buyer will inexplicably pay 20-30% more than the thing is worth, since that's the loan balance. Many of these are older folks followed the whole mess down the rabbit hole. They couldn't or wouldn't sell for lower that the loan balance. They are paying $5-8K a year in payments, and once a year the "book value " drops by another $4-6K. At that point it is often a big hulk of money sucking waste, sitting in the yard, until something happens. Maybe a small inheritance arrives, your kids bail you out, you die, who knows? Totally a bizarre, but common situation. Sadder than this, was the few widows we ran into who had a husband drop dead, and leave them with an upside down motorhome mortgage, a rig that the wife new nothing about, couldn't drive for a block, and still had a $6-800/ month payment. I had a neighbor who suffered this fate, but was smart enough to call the lender and tell then to come pick it up.
I believe that it's pretty easy to destroy your financial future with one loan on a medium to high priced RV, and that there are probably tens of thousands of Americans going down in flames, every year because the stupid RV mortgage finished them off.
You just described my mother. She still has her 2001ish RV and can't sell it for what she still owes on it. Luckily she has the money to make the payments on it but she made bad choices.
I have a very modest, but nice to us, travel trailer that our family uses several times a year and it's much less than going and renting every time we go. We go to the same lake most of the time where all our friends have houses and house boats. My one buddy has four boats and two jet skis so we don't need to own a boat.
I've got some relatives on my father's side-- older folks who were teens during the Great Depression, the man was kicked out of the house at age 13-14 to go earn a living because the family couldn't feed him. Anyway they did OK for themselves in the long run but decided to buy a brand-new six-figure (in 1998 dollars) motor home, stop renting an apartment, and go with the full-time RV lifestyle. I saw the RV, inside and out: very new, very upscale, and I had no idea you could put a home like that on wheels but they did. Unfortunately they couldn't afford the payments. That in turn led to some pretty egregious behavior in terms of hitting other relatives up for "loans". I'd say they were finished financially.
