RV Blue Book Prices Should Include Wholesale Values

There is a lot of misleading information about RV values on the Internet today and it is time to clear up some things.

First of all it is very important to understand that any RV industry resource available for free on the Internet is designed to make you or keep you a retail RV customer. The online NADA prices do not even include wholesale values. The problem here is that profit paid equals instant depreciation and the preditory profits RV dealers are used to making is hurting RV buyers dramatically and becoming a big problem when the upside-down Rver tries to trade up.

A new manufacturer review book being offered for sale states that the Kelley Blue Book for RVs is not valid because it's values are always high. Well, I have been appraising RVs for over thirty years, ten years on the Internet, and I can tell you without a doubt that this is wrong. I can only imagine the value of the rest of the information they provide. This simple fact turned me off enough to not buy the book to review it.

Anytime you have the opportunity to get the opinion of the top two experts in a field, you should do it. In this case we have the professional edition of the NADA ( not available online) which includes list prices when new, used wholesale and used retail pricing and Kelley Blue Books for RVs (also not available online) which has the same value categories to evaluate your dream RV.

What you do have is a service designed to mislead RVers who want to price out there own RVs or one they want to buy. People who find this online pricing are usually thrilled to find it because legitimate RV information online is so hard to find and the confidence level in the truthfulness of RV dealers is at an all time low.

So what do you have? A service that commits the sin of ommission and provides the novice RVer the ability to over value their dream RV. What I mean by this is simple. First of all, you have no indication of what this pricing is based on, the new list price, and second, you have no wholesale prices.

Over the last five years I have watched the RV industry gear up to ravage the baby boomers. This includes increasing markups on new RVs and inflating the asking prices of used RVs to unbelievable levels.

The bottom line here is simple. Once a RVer sees what the pricing in both professional editions of the RV appraisal guides are based on, the list price, the value of the RV when it was new, they quickly realize there is no need to add for supposed options. They are already accounted for in the basis price, the list price, and therefore included in the basic pricing.

This is why many RV dealers try to take RV trade-ins at below book wholesale and guess what. You can not find RV wholesale pricing online except through my service.

Here is a big secret. Nobody pays for options to begin with! The discounts available for new RV buyers are tremendous. Most RVs today are sold below their base price unless it is one of the new generation of super expensive fifth wheels with option lists in the tens of thousands. It used to be hard to add more than about $5,000.00 in options to a well equipped fifth wheel. How much below base price can you buy a new RV?

I have seen many an amateaur RVer boldly mislead their fellows on the forums by stating you can get a 25-30% discount on a new RV. This would be OK thinking if RVs had one mark-up. Just since the first of January 2008, I have documented mark-ups on new RVs I have priced for people that vary from 25% to over 65%! Anyone who follows this advise will do well on the low end mark-up units but take a trouncing when their dream RV's mark-up is over 40-45% and most of them are.

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Hi, my name is Dave Gricunas. I run rvruru.com my hub website for my growing group of online resources for RV buyers and sellers. I am an RV industry insider who crossed the desk to help RVers instead of hurting them. My online RV Value Reporting service has been available on the Internet for over ten years and I still may be the only RV insider willing to help RVers sort out the mess the RV industry wants you try and figure your way through. Good luck and pay me a visit. You will be glad you did.