Small Camping Trailers

are motor homes a good investment?

Considering a motor home to be used in conjunction with a business project. Travel several states

Public Comments

1. while you certainly won't make any money on it unless you are buying it dirt cheap, if you are doing it and you have some idea of what kind of overhead your business supports it's a fine idea. say you are using it for sales and your best conservative guess is that you can sell $10,000 of product a month. also say your product cost is $5,000 per month. that leaves you with the other $5000 to pay your costs and provide you with your profit. so then the question would be what costs would be associated with the motorhome: fuel, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, etc. the value of the motorhome over time will diminish. if you pay a fair price for it, the irs would say it depreciates over a seven year period so if it cost $70,000 after the first year it would be worth $60,000. (1/7 of $70,000). However, i use a bit of a different idea for real value estimates. It called the 3 year half rule of vehicles. it means that if you take the cost of any particular vehicle at any given time, you can roughly figure it to be worth half in three years. SO, the $70,000 mh would be worth $35,000 after three years. So if you can figure out what your business can support financially overall you can derive just how much motorhome it can reasonably support and conclude whether a $5000 mh would be appropriate or if a $50,000 mh would be ok or if you should just drop the whole thing. In the end, you may be satisfied to just break even since you may actually enjoy the mh too. that's your decision.
2. if you have a good tax man I am sure he will find all kinds of deductions for you
3. It could be a good investment, but if you plan to use the internet you will not find all the places you park with connections. Also you will still need to tow a car or be prepared to use a cab when you get where your going. You could also be looked at as a Gypsie. A Cadillac or Lincoln will create a better impression and the motels and hotels all have internet hookups now. Fuel consumption hasn't been good either. Average is about 6 mpg.