5 Risks of Selling your RV on Your Own

When it’s time to sell your RV, whether you’re moving back to sticks and bricks or getting a new rig, you can save yourself a lot of time, worry and hassle by selling it to a dealer. The risks of selling your RV on your own are getting higher.

Fraud

While hand-written checks were always a risk, there are now fraudsters in the world of finance that can create fake cashier’s checks. Unless you have an attorney close at hand that can help you chase down cheats, you may be out a lot of money and won’t find out until the new owner drives off with your investment.

Connections

When you post an ad about selling your RV, you will risk exposure in several ways. You have to

• post pics of the RV
• give people your address, and
• let folks know that, once you sell it, you will have a lot of money in your pocket

If you sell your RV to a dealer, you have one transaction, the dealer, one check that nobody knows about, and you can take it directly to the bank and drive safely to your home without sharing your address with the world. The RV dealers are willing to give you a fair price because they want to add it to their used RVs for sale in their inventory.

Who’s then responsible for the security of the rig? The RV dealer, who has security cameras, a fence, and probably a guard. Protect yourself; don’t expose your information.

Test Drives

If your new potential owner wants to test drive the rig, you will need to hand over the keys. If they don’t know what they’re doing and tear up your rig, you will have to take it off the market while the insurance companies fight it out. An RV dealer likely has a lot where people can practice, and will ask drivers to sign a waiver in the event of a wreck.

Any potential purchaser with nefarious intentions can make a test drive extremely risky as well. No matter how security conscious you are, never put yourself in the hands of someone with evil intentions. Let the dealer handle the test drive.

Your Time

Selling your RV on your own will require you to put a lot of time into a project that you may never recoup. You’ll need to take photos, find a safe place to post them, deal with gawkers, field too many phone calls and supervise test drives. Even if you do make more money selling your RV privately (and that’s not a given) your hourly rate for the work of selling it will likely be less than minimum wage. Don’t undervalue your time and frustration level.

Cleanup

Every gawker, even if they’re not serious, will force you to clean up the RV. In today’s world, that means disinfecting everything they may have touched. You should require anyone who wants to check out the RV to wear a mask, but what will you do if they refuse? Inviting strangers onto and into your property in today’s world can be fatal.

Your health, safety, sanity and time are precious. It would be nice to think that everyone out there is honest and will stand by their word, but we need to remember that there are folks out in the world that are downright desperate. Don’t put your information out in the world, letting strangers know that there’s an RV on your property, only to come home and find it’s been stolen, stripped or vandalized. Protect your privacy and your safety by selling your RV with a dealer.

Categorized in: RV Info