Buy now or wait?

All this talk about the market, recession, interest rates, etc. I'm not sure how what to anticipate how that will affect cost of things in the near future.

I'm looking to buy a 5th wheel RV. Am I better off buying as soon as I can because things are about to hit the fan and prices will soar or wait because when this economy takes a dump, prices will plunge?
I need some economics 101 thrown at me.

I don't mind buying used but I probably will not go older than a 2018 - 2019.
For what I want, I could pay cash in full, but if interest rates are really low, I don't mind financing some of the cost just to keep some money free.

I'd probably wait if I had cash. Gonna be a bunch for sale before long. Already several popping up for sale around here.

well, interest rates are going to go up maybe next week. Some folks are saying the FED might raise it a full 1%. If you can pay cash then go for it. Do you think you'll use it enough to be worth the $40,000+ it will cost or would you be better off just renting one when you need it? I like to camp and all, but don't go anywhere close enough to buy a RV. You can rent one for like $200 a day.

With gas prices going up, I would definitely wait. I remember when the auto makers couldn't give their gas guzzlers away when gas prices soared after Katrina.

I got 2 kids and both play travel baseball and softball. I was looking at my calendar today and the last weekend we didn't have a tournament somewhere was Easter weekend.
When we travel, hotels are averaging $200 a night and that's not including the tax. Then food, etc. So I do think we would use the trailer. I anticipate some slow months with this ball travel. But maybe then we could actually do a camping trip of some sort.


So if interest rates increase, do you think sellers will decrease the price? This is the kind of stuff that I'm just not strong at. I need some savvy thrown my way to help me understand when what goes up it will help to make what go down.

But if people are going to have a tougher time affording a house due to interest rates, do you think the trailer industry is going to have a bigger boom than it already has?
I don't know if the travel trailer industry will use that as an excuse to increase price.

Have you ever used Priceline or hotels.com? You can get hotels for way under $200/nt, unless you have to stay at the hilton or Marriott. Can you stay in a dump like a courtyard or fairfield? Seriously those are fine places to stay a night.

Trailers I've been looking at are I'd say 50k +. I just really want to be sure I'm making the most of it and a good decision before I drop that kind of coin.

The places we stay at are Holiday Inn, Fairfield Inn or Comfort Inn Suites. I think it was in Tomball a month or so ago that even the BestWestern was $200 a night.
And yes, we've used some of those 3rd party websites to book.

Plan on burning a lot of gas towing a big 5th wheeler. I think with these gas prices people will be selling their TTs.

Good deals pop up in good times and bad times... keep looking and become familiar with pricing of what you're looking for.. then pounce when one comes up.

This is the same thing my dad says.
Like I say to him, I'm going to bet that even though I use more fuel, there will still be some cost savings in the fact that I can swap $200/night for $40/night and swap $60 restaurant meals for grocery store cost and preparing my self.
But I could be wrong....

And for those of you who don't eat out much, that $60 restaurant bill isn't a steak dinner.
Chicken Express 7 piece combo meal with the large upgrade to get a larger drink and side is just under $15. With a family of 4 and someone giving up a tender or two for the dog, it doesn't take much to drop almost $60 at a Chicken Express. The same goes for Wataburger. Subway is a little cheaper but I hate their bread. The kids love that place and I don't know why.

Are these one night trips?

Used to be able to pick up gas powered RV's fairly cheap, not sure anymore these days. But those types of RV's make great one night Boon Dock machines. Yes the gas mileage sucks, yes you'd have gas spent for the generator, but you would skip out on the RV site nightly rental rates, cause those will add up as well. Camp out at the local Walmart, completely sell contained.

I just looked around Tomball, where you said one tournament was held, the nightly rates on 4 of the nearest RV parks I found was $47 to $69 a night. Don't forget to calculate that in your budget.

The CONS: Diesel cost pulling the trailer while getting 6-7mpg. Pulling the trailer across texas and having an extra 4 tires that can blow out. How much are RV spots per day and are they convenient to get too and from. Idiot drivers cutting you off and more risk of wrecks. Constant hooking and unhooking the trailer & setup, PITA…Tiny shower and toilet.



Pros: everything is with you and should not get left at home. Maybe save money on food, unless you eat out anyways.
You have your own beds without the risk of bedbugs.



The prices will not go up, they will only come down with the prices being ridiculous right now. The economy will not be recovering soon. Realistically, after spending $60k on a trailer and fuel, you won’t be saving any money. But you’ll have the consistency of having a familiar place to stay. I was looking at them, my turn off was how much RV spots were to rent, it was almost ridiculous.

This is probably some good advice. With the current mentality in the lead, we will all fall further into recession mode. A lot of folks will have to sell off their toys to eat and less people left with any buying power. New prices are cray cray. We bought a new 30' bumper pull in November of last year and the week after we paid for ours, the price went up $4K.

If you have a place to store it on your property awesome, that will save you a ton as well. We don't have room without some major construction, so we are paying for Storage space. It is ALSO going up every few months. It was $130 for a nice covered storage place, now it is up to $233 month. That's right, $233 a month to store it. FJB.

Have you looked at aibnb’s? May not be cheaper than a hotel but you can fix meals there.

Wait. Peoples income is getting used up. There will be a bunch of used ones on the market at a decent price. I plan to get one in three years which is about 2 yrs before I retire. Headed north during summer for 5 months to get away from the constant heat.

You don’t do it to save money. You do it to be where you want to be without a ton of advanced planning.

To answer your original question, I am not an economist, don't claim to know anything more than my line of work. I think hard times are ahead. I think we as a nation and the world in general are headed for bleak dark times. Just my gut, I have no education in these things, just what I see going on around the world and in our own back yards. I think there's going to be a lot of pain for a lot of people in the near future.

If that means new RV prices come down, who knows. But I bet used prices of everything goes down.

When I go to Chicken Express in Rockwall I use coupons. A 4 piece strip meal with a coupon went from $6.99 to $7.99 a few months ago and is now $8.99. Dominoes still has good deals with coupons but without coupons they rape you. I tried calling in a medium pizza for pickup without a coupon and they wanted $15. I told them to stick it. Order online and use coupon and same pizza was 7.99.

I turned 59 1/2 a few months ago..... cashed out of my 401k's into an IRA. And they are sitting on it.

Have you considered something like this?

https://www.cruiseamerica.com/buy-used-rvs

I would wait. A ton of people went out and bought new campers when covid hit and now they are starting to try and dump them. Prices will come down because people are being pressured financially and it isn’t going to let up for a while

Here you go!

Kind of in the same boat. Different kind of trailer, but I'm thinking wait until the new year, maybe longer. I don't have enough body parts to sell, to afford the fuel prices. This country is about to make some changes and not for the better. It's time to start growing our own food and collecting the rain water.

I bet by Christmas time, you'll be able to find your trailer a lot cheaper.

This is where the world has changed. When I was a kid in the 70's and money got funny in the world, most families put kids play expenses on the shelf for a minute.

As a travel ball family, we play roughly 15 tournaments a year. So that's 30 nights a season assuming no Friday games. I usually book IHG hotels through Priceline for around $100 per night. That comes to roughly $3000 per year and requires no maintenance expense and upkeep, also comes with free breakfast so there is six less meals for three people over the weekend. We looked into buying a fifth wheel or even a motor coach, but the economics were just not viable.

He could be booking two rooms?

Hilton has Double tree and Hampton Inn and Suites, that’s where we usually stay.

Become. a member and collect points and status.

They have breakfast and supper, free once you have stayed there awhile.

Showers in RV’s usually suck compared to a hotel.

Buy now....as long as what you’re doing is not going to place a burden on the family unit, get it and enjoy it... there will always be that great sale or better time in the future, but your not promised tomorrow... I’ve never bought anything I wanted with the thought of it increasing in value down the road like an investment.... get it, use the [censored] out of it, and don’t look back except to recollect the good times you had with it...

Demand for RVs is already plummeting. I'm from Elkhart Indiana which is the RV capital of the world. As a semi-retirement gig my dad long haul delivers new RVs all over the country. He tells me there are vast fields of them in my home town not moving. Partially because of demand, partially becomes nobody wants to haul them right now at the current fuel prices. Every time fuel prices rise RV demand goes down, I saw it happen half a dozen times growing up. That said, the price of new RVs is not going to change much in the future. The RV companies will just throttle back production to reduce supply. You might be able to find a great deal on a used one somewhere, but who knows.

As others have stated, with fuel prices the way they are, I'd really examine the math on the purchase. An economy hotel might wind up being a better/cheaper option that's a lot less hassle than dealing with the setup, take down, clean up, maintenance, and repair on an RV (every brand of which are varying degrees of junk.)

I guess it's like buying a used boat..have your cash ready and be patient

also, know what you want

Buddy of mine and his wife did exactly what you are thinking..incidentally their son made it to the majors a few days ago after being drafted 6 years ago..Chris Okey, Cincinnati Reds

pros, you can come and go as you please as long as there is a space to be had. you get to cook/eat what you want. you can use it to camp/fish/travel.

cons, have to have a place to store, pain to pull in traffic (wait till you get to pull it in a high cross wind), fuel will be stupid high cost as nothing gets good mileage pulling one, extra wear and tear on the tow vehicle, have to set up and take down as well as have grey and black water drained and it is best done at the rv park you stay at, have to remember to treat black water tank or the big stinkum comes. there are things I am forgetting but end result is you will have maintenance no matter if you use it or not so figure the number of nights you would use it along with probable mileage/fuel cost for all tournaments, all the minor expenses like storage etc. and see if it actually saves you anything. you will take about an hr. to set up and a little more to get ready to leave (draining tanks takes a few mins.) figure about 3 hrs. a trip for this.

Once I leave the office for the day, take a guess where I go? Yep, straight to the ball fields. So I wasn't able to keep up yesterday evening.
To follow up on a few responses:



The team my daughter is on has one day tournaments at times. But my sons tournaments are always a two-day tournament. Son plays Perfect Game tournaments and those usually pull more teams as I’ve been told they are higher quality ball. Girls just don’t have as much of the participation as the boys do. So their tourneys can be much smaller.


I have. And sometimes you can find a small house for about the same or close to the same cost has the hotel. But then there are the fee’s that they tack on that make it as much as $50 - $75 more a night. Cleaning fees can range anywhere from $50 - $150. And we travel with a dog. Some places will even say no service animals allowed.


I’ll admit it I don’t do a lot of coupons. I just don’t ever have any come my way. But I do have a coupon that I have saved in my phone and have been using now for about 3 years. It is with Pizza Hut and is coupon PQ. It gives you 30% off. My son and I like the wings more than we do the pizza. So 30% off of those helps!





Ya, no interest in going that route. There’s probably already enough maintenance in an RV that I don’t know about yet. To add on mechanical maintenance on top of that, I don’t want to do that.



My parents recently stayed at a hotel in Vernon when they went to go watch a graduation. Dad said his LaQuinta Inn was $130/night. Now that’s probably with his military discount.
Like I told him, for whatever reason Austin & Houston hotel prices seem to be higher.

If you are paying cash and not taking a loan on this one, then I would wait. As most have mentioned, interest is going up for all loans. Usually when interest rises, prices go down because people cannot justify high prices and high interest rates. So demand goes down, so prices drop. Since interest may not be a factor for you because you are going to pay cash for it, then wait til the prices drop with interest rates going up, and you can probably get something a little bigger or better for the same cash amount you are willing to pay today.

Econ 101-

Buyers market = Lower prices, higher interest

Sellers market = Higher prices, lower interest

In both cases, the banks make their money somehow. The question you have to ask yourself is what is more important? Do you want a large loan with super low interest or do you want a smaller loan with higher interest. Personally, I wait for a lower price on the loan and would rather pay higher interest. When the market adjusts out of a seller market, I never like being upside down on loans. I like knowing I can sell anything and at least break even. Seller market buys make sense though if you plan on owning the loan/investment for a very very long time. It is the situations where you need to get out or sell within a couple years where people take losses or get themself in trouble.

STOCKS/ETF/INDEX FUNDS:

Bull market - I invest 50% of what I can afford (every paycheck) into long term investments, and the other 50% I swing trade or day trade (careful with short term investments, I spent over a year teaching myself how to read charts and how to do this with paper trading, but once you get it, there is some serious money to be made doing this).

Bear Market - I invest 100% of what I can afford into long term investments, and if I can scrape anymore cash up, I also invest at this time. When the market comes back, this is when you see exponential return because everything you buy in a bear market is a discount.

Toys - Boats, TTs, ATVs and side pieces are fist to go when the wheels fall off the economy.

What is the deprecation on your side piece?

Here is my opinion and our experience growing up -

Our family had an RV and we traveled for sports. We took the RV for a couple of trips and then abondoned the idea. The RV was just to combursome. It was difficult enough to get out of school or for my parents to get off work and make it to the town in time for the 1st race. With the RV we couldn't travel as fast, had to go to the campground and drop it off because there was never anywhere to park it and then after a long weekend of racing we had to go back and tear it all down before leaving which made the weekend even longer. Then they had the idea of my dad pulled the RV and went straight to the campground to setup and my mom drove us in her car. So now we are taking two cars and one of them pulling the camper - there was no savings there.

I hear you on savings money on food so here is what we did - my parents instead invested in better camping / travel food prep equipment and we upgraded to suite hotel rooms that had kitchens. They had it down to two plastic tubs and a cooler. We had a foldup propane grill, extra plates, grilling utensils in one of the tubs and the other held the dry food stuff - sides, buns, etc. We made it our goal to eat breakfast at the hotel using the kitchen and then one of the other meals from the grill. Sometimes my dad grilled off the tailgate in the parking lot. After a trip or two more parents invested in our setup also. Given this was 20 years ago I am sure the tailgating/camping equipment is much better.

Look at pre-owned models. Brand new RVs always have problems. A used RV will have all of these problems taken care of.

RV market will be in the dumps in 6 months compared to right now. Definitely wait. I've been telling folks for months that when all these covid rv buyers realize they don't wanna do it long term there is gonna be a flooded market. Now with gas prices sky high that is accelerating. Market is wildly different than just 3 months ago. I seen folks putting orders in on units paying full MSRP 2 months ago to take a new unit now...and I just shake my head. Could easily save 30%-40% buying a used market in 3-6 months from now. If money doesn't matter, I guess that's fine. Otherwise, you'd be crazy to buy at this point.