Mad Used Motorhome Pricing.

OK, it's not an A/S but I was just perusing Autotrader and found this.

The list price of a particular brand new 2016MY van is £38,849 plus, for comparison purposes, a factory fit microwave at another £179, giving a total of £39,028, which you'd hope you could get a discount on. 

On Autotrader there's exactly the same model but 2015MY, registered exactly a year ago, with factory fit microwave as the only extra and 2,160 miles on the clock, the selling dealer wanting £35,995 for it.

So a difference of £3,033 below buying exactly the same van brand new with no miles and no nagging worry about why someone chucked in a van at under a year old. That's under an 8% reduction on new. So why would someone countenance spending £36,000 for used van when they can get sparkly new for £39,000, or maybe less if you can wangle a decent discount? 

My conclusion is there are some very, very greedy dealers about and some very dim buyers if it sells for that price.

We've covered this topic before and it seems to be the old adage of supply and demand.
Yes, you might expect to get a used 'van for the pre-VAT price but that hardly ever happens these days.
Given the guaranteed several required visits to a dealer to sort out teething problems, many folk prefer to go for a one year old 'van in the hope that those problems have been attended to.
I suppose there's always the worry of why a 'van was resold but there seem to be enough wealthy people who spend their money on a new 'van thinking it will be a great new way of life and then realise it's not for them and happily sell it on to finance a new project.
Having said that, we viewed a one year old 'van a couple of weeks ago with around a 10 grand saving off a new one. Once we had a good look inside, we realised why. It looked like a fifteen year old one; bits bashed, scratched, dirty and broken.
Quite how some people could disrespect something they paid damn good money for is beyond my ken.
Each to their own I suppose.
nuevoboy.

Having said that, we viewed a one year old 'van a couple of weeks ago with around a 10 grand saving off a new one. Once we had a good look inside, we realised why. It looked like a fifteen year old one; bits bashed, scratched, dirty and broken.
Quite how some people could disrespect something they paid damn good money for is beyond my ken.
Each to their own I suppose.
nuevoboy.

Possibly an ex-hire van.

Does amaze me when I see vehicles being sold that new.  I know sometimes people just don't get on with them, but the depreciation would hurt me a lot.

The dealer probably gave them a fair bit less than 30K for it so they'll have lost over 10 grand in less than a year.

Think if someones unsure about a purchase, at least go second hand so the resale isn't affected too much over that length of time, but as above, guess there's plenty of people with enough cash not to worry about that sort of thing.

We have ordered brand new for our first "professional" van - but we have been using self builds for about 15 years so we do know we like the life.  

I would have been happy pre-owned but as Heather has never owned a brand new car, and this van has to last us for many years we decided to go new. However we have gone for a few extras which has given us a long wait. It would have been lovely to have started the camping season with it but that's just not going to happen so when we found out the delivery delay it would have been tempting to go pre-owned.

How many of these people buying expensive 2nd hand have decided just before Easter to buy a camper, have gone to their local dealer and found that they couldn't get a new one for summer?

dbroada wrote:
How many of these people buying expensive 2nd hand have decided just before Easter to buy a camper, have gone to their local dealer and found that they couldn't get a new one for summer?

That's a fair point if the particular model for 2016MY is sold out and/or the local dealership's allocation is committed already to other buyers.

Let's not forget that we're already 8 months into the 2016 Model Year and in reality manufacturers have only 3 months left to produce 2016MY vans, with factory holidays and 2017MY demonstrators to be built.