How to fund a new van?

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Hello all,

We bought a year old motor home nearly 2 years ago, unfortunately it's not been the most reliable and we've realised isn't quite the right layout for us. We took a trip to the motor home show in Birmingham yesterday and have fallen in love with a new van. Unfortunately new van is a £75-80,000 cost to change. We spent our life's savings on the first van, so would need to fund this one. There were "special" show rates of 8.9% vs 9.9% but it's a mega payment! I'm thinking stick it on the mortgage but maybe there's something else.

The question is, how do people fund motor homes if they don't have the cash:
Add to mortgage?
Personal loan (capped at £50K?)?
Other/what am I missing?

Don't really want a PCP, plan to keep van 10 years, maybe longer then sell it to pay for a smaller van when step daughter no longer wants to holiday with us.

Thanks in advance for any help and advice.
Aaron

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Spuffington said:

What van has taken your fancy, if you don't mind me asking?

Coachman Travel Master 545 (or whatever number the Island bed model is). Currently have an Etrusco A7300DB, pretty good van, just not quite big enough.

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The Selfish Gene said:

I put 10k down..........then blackhorsed through a dealer on a 10 year scheme..........think it was 584 a month % was 6.9 from memory but this was 2020

Thanks for both your responses. We're lucky the mortgage is only £360 a month now, and adding £80k takes it to just under £800. HP on it's own over 10 years was £1041, which is way too much with the mortgage as well. Obviously the mortgage is over a longer period, but it's affordable this way and like you say enjoy while we can (43 years old) as my wife has had a pretty serious cancer scare this year so thinking lets go nuts as you never know when your time is up. That being said, we thought we went mental when we bought the last one!

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r3g said:

The issue you have is that you most likely can't sell your current one except to a dealer, who will offer you buttons for it. No private buyer has those sort of funds available in cash to buy without finance, unless you get extremely lucky.

On the other side of the coin, even with a good credit history, finance is a LOT more expensive know that it was a decade or two ago, so you'll be paying mega monies to get your "dream" van.

I recommend you find some way of making your current van work for you. It was obviously fine for you when you bought it, otherwise you wouldn't have done! Either that, or throw a sizeable 5 figure sum away just to have the bed in a slightly different place, which would be completely bonkers.

As a side note, with the price of vans now, you could have numerous 5-star hotel stay holidays for the same money and not have the van parked up doing nothing for 6 months of the year, losing fortunes in depreciation.

I totally accept the trade offer will be below retail, my £75-80k Cost To Change is assuming we get £50k trade for ours (fairly realistic I think). I sell SEATS and Cupra's for a living so fully understand buying retail and selling trade, it does bother me, but if it's to get the right thing then I'm OK with it.

Exactly, hence my wondering if there was another way. I think just throwing it at the mortgage is the solution.

You certainly could have a lot of holidays for £80k, but our van so far hasn't been parked up all that much. We use it at least once a month, even if it's just a weekend away, I took 6 weeks unpaid off work this summer to go touring Europe. We do around 8,000 miles a year in it, which I understand is high for a MoHo. The other thing, is it's been unreliable, this has highlighted the flaws in the design of the van, I suspect if it had been reliable we'd put up with the flaws. The other reason is, while I'm working we can afford it, this then gives us a fully paid off van still worth a decent chunk in 10 years time, we can sell and downsize with minimal costs.

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r3g said:

Also speak to Jody on here (naghsheadwarrior). He is a dealer guy at one of the majors and will give you good advice on what you can realistically expect to get for yours.

That's a good shout, I chatted with him quite a bit on the car salesman sub forum and on the phone before buying our current one.

As regards the reliability, it might not have been so bad if Fiat UK weren't completely uninterested in doing anything to help when a common fault occurs 2 months out of warranty. I don't want to have to suffer Fiat UK ever again. They were pretty hopeless when the first sensor failed and even worse with the second one.

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Ezra said:

I don't have a solution but just the thought of financing a vehicle (I know, a v expensive vehicle) through a mortgage just feels wrong. It's a depreciating asset whereas the mortgage generally finances an appreciating asset.

This is what I tell my customers all the time, so do understand your point and totally agree. Just at the moment my wife is currently medically unable to work ,so we can't really afford a loan on the van plus the mortgage. All being well she'll be back working in the next 6-12 months but likely on less money than before her illness, so we can revisit options then.

Could well be a case of paying some capital down via mortgage for a couple of years, saving a bit and then hopefully be in a position to get a personal loan and pay down the mortgage with that.

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Unfortunately our vans failings were not usage related, 2 knock sensors. Not sure what broke the first one, but the second was due to a poor design by Fiat where the AC hose rubs on the knock sensor, rubs through and the cold air freezes the sensor and it breaks. It's also Fiats attitude to the issues that's put us right off too. You can see by their 1 star Trustpilot reviews why we wouldn't want another.

We've been pretty conscious of using the van regularly for the reasons you mentioned. We've averaged 8,000 miles a year and we always drive it once a month to keep on top of the battery condition.

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Hammersia said:

Think I'd agree with all this ^^^ the modern diesel with adblue and all that malarky can be very fragile, and absoutely no guarantee of a Merc being any better.

You obviously love motorhoming and that's brilliant, so why not do whatever it takes to live your dreams, including remortgaging. Life is short yes.

BUT

Is there a cheaper, simpler (no adblue), older motorhome with your ideal layout available for far less cash? I don't know much about them, but like a Hymer or something?

This is the issue, as much as look at Autotrader I just haven't seen anything that ticks the boxes. We really would like to spend less, but what we want is impossible to find so far. I've been looking a lot at older Hymers as they use quite a bit of Merc for their older chassis, but most seem to have the twin single beds, which we don't want. It also seems that a second hand one doesn't really represent great value right now, you're talking £90-100k for a 6/7 year old van with 15-30k miles. A new one with a higher spec, 10 year water ingress warranty and 3 year hab warranty is £130,000.

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Car/Caravan combination is a no go for us unfortunately. My company car can change at the drop of a hat and the replacement might not have tow bar and the company won't fit one at dealer as it's so much more expensive. Also most car dealers are hesitant to fit tow bars as they don't add any value for the vast majority of potential customers.

My wife isn't medically able to drive a car for another 12 months, so we have no need for a second car and even then we don't know if the DVLA will give her licence back. Another joyous result of her brain tumour! Before the brain tumour, she had a TT, so we tend to run a small cheaper car as her car, no point having a big car for her to do 3-4k a year in along with my company car.

I would prefer a caravan, but it just doesn't work for us. Also caravans don't have garages and I like to keep our bikes locked up.

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Big Rat said:

I’m sorry to hear about your wife wish her a speedy recovery……..yes you could be right about the driving licence situation ….. hope things work out for you both chap….

Thank you, she's doing really well fortunately.

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Milner993 said:

A friend of mine owns an asset management company, he can supply funds for any type of purchase, happy to pm you some details if you want to speak with him.

Thank you, I will take you up on that offer please.

Funnily enough I was discussing my quandary with my boss yesterday afternoon and he suggested asset finance companies. Bit embarrassed I've been selling cars for 20 years and it didn't cross my mind!

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Thanks Jody, appreciate your advice, just as when we bought our Etrusco. My issue, isn't really the build quality of our current van, more the reliability of the Fiat chassis and Fiats lack of interest in helping us.

Once I've got the money sorted, I'll PM you to see what we can do.

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nagsheadwarrior said:

Tbh Pro rata I was gonna say we get least grief with Fiat's but these days it feels like everything breaks down die to sensor or electrical issues and the main dealers hate motorhomes so try their best to be as little help as possible!
Does vary across the country and a lot of other will ve down to your local dealer of said base vehicle.
If you have a commercial merc dealer or indeed fiat dealer like we had in Lancashire they tend to be far better.
Sadly in Devon most brands are vospers car dealerships who are less than great!

It's actually Fiat UK who have been hopeless, the dealer was fine. The other thing is the lack of Fiat Commercial dealers local to me, it's at least an hours drive to get to one and even then they only have 1 Fiat technician, it's just a shambles.

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egor110 said:

Whereabouts are you ?

We live in Crawley, West Sussex.

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Spuffington said:

Good luck with however it works out OP. Life is for living, as it sounds like you've really experienced recently. From that perspective, get it done however it works best for you. The Coachman I think looks like a lovely machine (expensive for what it is IMO but then everything is at the moment).

Keep us posted on how you get on!

2023 was quite a year, for more reasons than just my wife's brain tumour unfortunately and it's taught me that life is short so no point wasting time. Yes it's an expensive van, but compared to the A-Classes we saw it's a better van for our needs. Little things like the table isn't fixed, makes the living space so much better. We liked a Rapido M96, but the table is fixed and just doesn't feel like there's much space in the living area, it was the same on the Cathago one of similar price (did like the embossed Cathago glasses though!). To get most A Classes on a Merc chassis it's more money again, so in many ways, this is the cheap option! It would be nice to have those external slide out storage trays some vans have, but they're rare.

I should also add, I'm utterly spoilt by having company cars with all the toys, so having ACC, Climate control in the cab etc is very appealing as standard. We also had Truma AC fitted to our current van and the fact the Coachman comes with it and all the other bits we had fitted to ours like outside electric, gas and shower points as standard means we haven't got to get them fitted at extra cost.

Will update when I know more.

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HarryW said:

I notice the mention of Rapido, if you prioritise living space I’ve always had a soft spot for the 8094 (and older 9094). With full rear lounge and opposite seats for the front dinette. Very tardis like imho for its footprint.
I think Nags has got an older one in stock at present, might be too old for you though?

I do see the appeal of that type of layout, but we simply can't be bothered to make beds every night and put away in the morning, which is why we're after a Island bed. We have a transverse bed at the moment and it's a bit of a pain to make up, we've decided if we're going to spend a huge amount of money for us, it needs to tick all the boxes. Thanks for the suggestion though.

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HarryW said:

Also don’t necessarily get hung up if it’s got AC fitted or not you can get it supplied and fitted for about £1900 with auto additions who’ll fit whilst on your drive if necessary.

We had it fitted to our current van, it's more that it has it already which is just a handy bonus and means the outlay for the van is capped at the RRP or hopefully discounted price. Our last van was £72,500 but by the time we'd put all our extra bits on it was £76,000.

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rugbyleague said:

Question for me who is uneducated in matters motor-home who thinks he might buy one, do the overhead beds in this motor-home make the ceilings too low? i.e. can someone at 6ft stand fully upright without banging their head?

The Coachman we're looking at is great for height for me at 6'1" but the Adria Matrix I think with drop down bed like the Coachman, my head rubbed the roof quite a bit.

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nagsheadwarrior said:

Have ypu looked at the Merc based Adria Matrix VR6? Presumably I guess you have rather than the Fiat, shame you don't fit they are quality kit

We looked in one at the caravan show the other week, and the dealer with the Coachman is an Adria dealer so saw one again. But my head touches the drop down, and it misses the feeling of space the Coachman has, probably due to the width. I also thought it was a little overpriced compared to the Coachman, which to me was bigger, slightly better quality and slightly cheaper. Happy to be corrected on the price as maybe it had stuff the Coachman didn't but it looked about the same level of kit.

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We've given up on the van we found, trying to buy it was too hard. It felt like because we're in our early 40's and wear jeans and trainers they weren't interested in us. I took me chasing to get a PX price, it took a rant by me about their service to get them to work out a deal and the final straw was being told because they'd done us a deal they wouldn't retro fit the Model Year 24 awning LED light we wanted even though I was willing to pay for it. They eventually said they would, but the process has left us cold.

Ultimately I think our overall preference is to order a brand new one with LED/Xenon headlights, from a dealership that wants our business and wait for it to arrive.

Thanks for everyone's help and suggestions on the matter, it's been pretty clear for the now the only way it's affordable for us is adding to the mortgage.