How I Sold My RV In Less Than 24 Hours

Much has changed since I last posted to this blog. While I still own an RV (more on that one later), I sold the one I’ve had for over 9 years.

My 2002 Holiday Rambler Vacationer is mine no longer. I sold it privately and managed to do so in less than 24 hours.

I spent a day taking it for a much needed spin around the area to work the engine and generator, gave it a nice wash, took some photos and a video and listed it. By late afternoon the next day, I was backing it out of my property for the last time with it’s new owner right there…. and I watched him drive it away.

Here’s how it went down…

Why I Sold My RV

I really liked that motorhome. I had done a lot to it and it was (and is) a very well built motorhome. Today’s Holiday Rambler Vacationers are just not as well built. Holiday Rambler is nothing but a brand name now. But, back in 2002, it was still it’s own company and they built these things right.

So, why did I sell it?

Well, as a lot of people who own larger motorhomes end up deciding, I decided I wanted something smaller.

The impetus for that is the building I store it in here at my home. I wanted to change the floor plan of the building to give myself a much larger interior workshop and tool space. But, my 36-foot motorhome took up the entire length of the building leaving no room for much else besides a very tiny little tool room stuffed into the corner.

At the same time, the phase of our family means that taking multi-week trips with the kids is likely over. My daughter is almost 18 now and her life has gotten much busier. My son isn’t far behind. Also, wife decided to go back to work full-time as she has an engineering degree and her mom duties definitely don’t take much time anymore.

Our life being what it is, we’re much more likely to take day trips or weekend trips locally than we are to fly off across the country like we did when the kids were younger. If we head out of state, we’d do so for at most a week. And when that time comes that we take trips without the kids, we certainly don’t need a 36-footer.

All this added up to the fact that I had more benefit by getting rid of my big Class A motorhome and downsizing.

What I Was Told About Trade-In Values On An Old Motorhome

One day, my wife and I went over to Lazydays Tampa to check out some of their used Sprinter-based motorhomes. We weren’t considering buying one, but we just wanted to allow my wife to drive one and we wanted to see the insides.

The salesman there was quite nice and helpful. I originally bought my Vacationer at LazyDays, so it was a full circle moment in some ways. 😉

But, I asked him about his viewpoint on the trade-in value of my old 2002 motorhome.

They definitely don’t look at it in nearly the same way I do. 🤪

To me, my Vacationer was a great rig and a hell of a lot of motorhome. And considering all that I had done to it, it was in far better shape than most rigs in that age range. I did some looking around online and it looked to be like most private party asking prices for a rig that looks roughly equivalent was anywhere between around $18,000 and, say, $22,000. Most were on the lower end, but you saw things all over the place.

So, when LazyDays told me they’d probably only be able to offer me $2k-$3K, my response was…

Alrighty then.

He told me that because of the age, they’d end up just wholesaling it out because they couldn’t do much with it. He told me point blank that I’d be far better off selling it privately than trading it in.

How I Prepared To Sell My Own RV

With my main business (Blog Marketing Academy), I have some background and experience when it comes to marketing. And one of the absolute basic skills is to be able to “get inside the head” of your customer and see the problem from their viewpoint so that you can match your solution to their need. This is just basic 101 level stuff.

In this case, a person shopping for a used RV in this price range is looking primarily for one thing: An RV which is in good condition that they can trust.

I had an RV in pretty good condition. So, the missing piece was to build trust.

When you look around at so many listings for used RVs, it is clear that the people who are writing those listings don’t know the first thing about how to build any trust.

They almost always post far too little information. They seem to want to focus on the stuff like miles on the odometer, leaks, the fact that everything works, etc. Same basic stuff… from one ad right onto the next one.

Usually the ads are just too short and light on info. A few sentences (if that) offering little of value. And a handful of photos.

They expect to gain a new potential sale for multiple thousands of dollars in a sea of competitors with a few photos and a few sentences! Unless you low-ball the price to something stupid, you’ll be lucky to make a sale like this.

To build TRUST, you need to do more. Namely…

• You need to use LOTS of photos.
• In my case, I made a video. (more on that in a bit).
• Be open and transparent about all of the good things and the bad things. If there’s something wrong, disclose it up front. You might think that’ll scare people off, but people don’t expect perfection on a rig this old. They appreciate transparency.

So, as I said before, I took the rig for a spin. It needed it anyway. I needed to run the engine and run the generator. While I was driving down the road, I had an idea…

So, I picked up my iPhone and quickly recorded a few seconds of footage of my RV driving down the road. It clearly showed that the rig ran fine, was driving nicely. It was also from the driver’s standpoint, so the viewer could see themselves driving this motorhome.

When I arrived back home, I washed the entire RV. All 4 sides as well as the roof. I also briefly cleaned the interior. Then, I busted out my iPhone and recorded a video.

How I Listed My Used Motorhome For Sale

I recorded the following video:

As you can see, this video begins with my footage of the RV in motion. Then, I spend several minutes doing a full walkthrough of the both the outside and inside of the rig.

I make sure to talk about all of the features and I also mention many of the things I’ve done to the rig. This video is over 10 minutes of everything you’d want to know about this motorhome without seeing it in person.

I also took numerous photos of the motorhome, so I had it covered both with photos as well as a comprehensive video.

Since I have this very website and I obviously know how to build websites, I created a landing page for my motorhome. You can view that landing page right here.

As you can see, I also linked to my full maintenance log for this motorhome. Yes, for the entire time I personally owned this motorhome, I kept a log of all of the upgrades and repairs and maintenance items I had done to it. I put that whole maintenance log into a PDF file and linked to that as well. You can see the entire PDF maintenance log here.

If I had only built that landing page, not many people would have seen it. So, I listed it on both Facebook Marketplace as well as RV Trader. My asking price was $22,900.

The text of my listing was as follows:

They don’t make them like this anymore. Well built with quality interior. 2002 Holiday Rambler Vacationer 36ft. W22 chassis. Model 36WDD. Chevy Vortec 8.1 engine with the Allison transmission. Onan 5500 generator with about 1000 hours (works well). Solid fiberglass roof. New awning. Lots of outside storage. 2 slideouts. Queen bed in the back (memory foam). Interior was remodeled with all new furniture, new flooring. Stainless steel residential fridge on dedicated inverter. New toilet (full porcelain). Flat screen TVs. New speakers. New backup monitor. Real wood cabinets throughout. Drives very nicely. Toyo tires. Safe-T-Steer steering stabilizer. Koni shocks. SumoSprings on front. For more photos and a video walkthrough, see: https://www.happilyrv.com/vacationer-for-sale/ Overall, it is a great rig and has been great for my family. Only getting rid of it because it is now just too large for our current lifestyle and we’re going to get something smaller. I’ll print off the full maintenance log of everything I’ve done to it and give it to you. I’ve done my best to keep it maintained and happy.

As you can see with the text, I wanted to quickly spell out the BENEFITS of my RV. Namely, the upgrades I had done and the fact it is well built. I listed features, of course, and named off plenty of them. I also built trust by mentioning that I have the full maintenance log and would share it with them.

Facebook Marketplace gets a lot of eyeballs and it is free to list, so obviously I did that.

RV Trader has a targeted audience of people specifically looking to buy RVs. RV Trader is NOT free to list, however. Unlike Facebook, RV Trader allowed me to post my video and up to 20 photos. I paid for an Enhanced listing and spent $171.99 to list my RV on RV Trader.

How The Sale Happened Within 24 Hours

My rig sold surprisingly fast. Frankly, so fast that I wasn’t really ready for it. 🤯

The very first person to reach out to me is the one that ended up buying it. He contacted me via RV Trader. We then connected by phone as I was about to sit down for lunch that day.

He was clearly very interested and highly motivated to buy. So motivated that he was ready to drive 2 hours to get to me that very day and pick it up. I had not unpacked the rig and it was full of our stuff still. I fully expected to have this RV for much more time and figured we may even use it on a few more trips because I just had this idea that it’d take a little effort to sell it. But, I was wrong.

He was able to get it that day. Really wanted it that day. Was able to bring a cashier’s check and everything. From a distance, everything felt legit.

We agreed on a price of $20,000. Yes, I went down in price and the reason is that I was very upfront about the fact that the tires were nearing replacement. If I were to continue to own the rig, I’d probably be looking to replace those tires within the next year. And a set of tires for that motorhome is going to run at least $3,500.

The thing is… I went into this originally thinking to ask about $18,000. Then, I thought…. ok, $20,000. Then, before I listed it, I decided to aim higher because I knew nobody was going to offer me exactly what I asked. That’s just not how the game works. 😜 So, I asked $22,900.

In the end, I actually pocketed more than I was originally expecting. And I thought it was fair to the buyer. Win win.

When he came over to see the rig in person, he told me he almost felt like he knew the rig already.

I showed him around, but it was more to confirm what he had already seen on the video.

It was my video that sold my motorhome within 24 hours.

Clearly, my price was good, too. 😇 It sold so freakin’ fast that part of me wondered if I had asked too little for it, but my research beforehand definitely showed me that I was right there in the right spot. Given how I presented it, I probably could have asked for more, frankly. I was comparing my price to other similar units with sub-par marketing. Frankly, I was coming in with all barrels blazing from a marketing perspective, but still keeping the price right in the same range.

Yes, I did some nice upgrades to the rig while I owned it, but the harsh truth is that those upgrades do very little to raise the actual value of a motorhome. They help it present well, but they don’t raise the market value a whole lot. The ROI on upgrades is more about owner experience than it is about recovering the cost when you sell. For the most part, you’re just not going to recover too much of the cost of upgrades you do to your RV.

Secondly, Class A motorhomes like this have the worst market value. It is the most ironic thing to me. Little Class C’s and Class B’s sell for so much money and tend to hold their value better. All the while, these Class A’s have all the luxuries and more space… yet they depreciate so fast and they sell used for less! So weird. But, whether I like it or not, it is true.

So, less than 24 hours later…. and after a speed session of quickly throwing all my stuff out of the motorhome to get it ready to drive off…

I backed my beloved Vacationer out of my yard for the last time.

Handed the new owner the keys. Gave him a few tips on driving it.

And watched him take off, go around the corner… and I’ll probably never see that rig again. 😢

My Personal Recommendations For Quick Sale Of A Used RV

I am no guru of RV sales. I’m not in the business. And, it is quite possible I lucked out completely in selling my rig this quickly.

That said, I do have some experience in making sales. And I know full well what I would look for personally if I were on the other end of the transaction. So, here are my recommendations.

• While you own your RV, keep maintenance logs of everything you do to it. Not only is that useful info for you, but it goes a long way to build trust when it comes time to sell it.
• I highly recommend that you record a VIDEO of the RV for your listing. Not some boring walk-around video with nobody speaking, either. Give a walk-through where you’re telling the prospective buyer what’s up with your rig.
• Take lots of photos. Good ones. Not stupid vertical photos with your low-res phone. You can use your phone, but make sure the photos are high-res and show a lot of detail. And take a lot of them. The number of people I see try to sell an RV where you can’t even tell what the floor plan is just shocks me.
• List on RV Trader. I’m not here to advertise RV Trader, but truth is that they have a targeted audience. The people who see your listing are looking for an RV. And they provide the option for video. While it is not free, it certainly proved to be worth the money.
• Don’t just boringly list a few features of your motorhome. Give them some benefits. Concentrate on the things they’ll want to know and the things that will make your rig stand out from the crowd.
  • How long is the rig?
  • What’s the model? Floor plan?
  • Is there anything wrong with it?
  • What makes your rig stand out? Cool upgrades? Recent maintenance? Things that the new owner won’t have to worry about because you already took care of it?

You don’t want people to have to contact you just to ask you stupid questions you should have already put in your ad.

Remember, too, that your rig is going to be sitting there in a sea of other rigs. Anybody who contacts you is looking at other rigs as well. So, how will YOUR listing stand out? Why would they bother to contact you?

And if you make them jump through stupid hoops by leaving out important information, they’re going to pay more attention to the rigs where there IS more information than do the legwork needed to contact you for answers to stupidly obvious questions you should have answered in your ad already.

If you do all of that, then the people who do reach out to you are far more serious. You’ll have less tire kickers.

And That’s How I Sold My RV

It happened quickly.

So quickly that I barely had a chance to register that I would never see it again.

It was also important to me that the new owners would take care of it. I hope they do. They seemed like nice gentleman and they had plans to travel up to Illinois with it and potentially even live in it for some time while they were doing some real estate things. And I hope they enjoy it.

We had great memories with that rig. It was a good one.

But, it was time for a new phase.

6 weeks later, I bought another one.

But, I’ll tell you about that in another post. 😇