[encantotom]

I have thought about writing this post for some time. As we each look or looked for our coaches the question at some point after we have decided we are interested in a particular coach is "what would i be willing to pay for it". then the next question is "what is it worth"?

in our world those are very subjective questions and there are as many opinions as there are people giving the opinions. i looked or a long time for a wanderlodge before i bought my first newell. it is the same question there.

back to used newells.

i get contacted quite a bit as to what any particular coach is worth. i try to stay vague for a few reasons. first is that often the buyer and prospective seller are either people i know or who are on this forum.

second is that the answer ultimately is always "it depends"

it depends on:

1. condition
2. if you like it a bunch
3. does your wife or husband love it
4. can you afford it
5. how much are you willing to pay and not feel bad about it
6. how much work are you willing to put into it. a lot or a little
7. is it from a dealer or private party. (in az, private party sales pay no sales tax so it makes a huge difference in the final price) for that reason i will only buy from a private party and not a dealer, but that is different from state to state.
8. is it a distress sale of any kind or not. this could be someone who needs to get rid of it or many other reasons. my 02 was owned by a company who just didnt want it any more. they had others to use.
9. are the high dollar things that need replacing regularly ok or need replacing? tires and batteries can cost you $10k on a tag axle coach and AGM batteries.
10. how much can you find out about the coach? when i was looking i was usually concerned when someone didnt know squat about their coach. in my case my 90 the previous guy knew alot. for my 02, i only dealt with a "user" and not owner and the user knew very little about it. so i had to take that into consideration on the value as i didnt know what it would need. my 02 ended up needing quite a bit, but it still turned out to be a good value in the end.

btw, these are in no particular order

most of the coaches that those of us have on this forum are mostly at least ten years old back to jimmys old 78 that is 35 years old. so there is going to be something that isnt "brand new" looking on most of them. (some exceptions here too)

so if you want a pristine coach that needs nothing, you are likely not going to get a screaming deal (but not always true there either). i have talked to several of you who have been looking and some are willing to dive in and work on things and others are wanting to get something that doesnt need much of anything

if you are willing to put time and money into it, then you are likely to get a better deal. my 02 had no bedroom. it had a large, really nice sectional couch with a pull out sleeper (the sleeper was terrible) and a desk on the opposite side. for me, i could only see a vision of where the bed was going to be and that i and my friends would build it. i am not done, but it has turned out quite nice so far.

back to value. in the end these things are worth what you are willing to pay for it. very few of the same year are the same in features and in price.

the best thing to do is to either have someone look at the coach you are interested in or to go look at it yourself. i have had a number of people go inspect coaches for me in the past.

so in the end, it is worth what it is worth to you. once you buy it, only look forward. enjoy it and learn about it.

they are amazing machines but take a do-it yourselfer and a wad of cash to own or an even bigger wad of cash if you hire someone to do things.

the listing prices are all over the map for these rigs. and it could be for many reasons. the owner owes that much, people are emotionally attached to it (like was to my 90), they dont know what it is worth, or they want to move it fast and on and on.

please feel free to chime in, as this is only one persons opinion.

later

tom-

[bikestuff]

I did an analysis of coach prices when I bought mine. Completely unscientific, but here is what I did and what I saw.

I went out and gathered all the information that I could find. (Year, number of slides, asking price, sold price (from ebay when I could get it). I then adjusted the value numbers for the number of slides and mileage. I forgot the exact formula but I normalized coaches to four slide prices. (Subtracted $$$ for coaches that did not have four slides).

In the end, the adjustments did not affect the answer.

What I saw was that new coaches lose approximately 10% of their value each year for the first 10 years. After that the values dropped and then flattened out and remained kinda constant for another 10 years. Coaches that are more than 20 years old seemed to drop again.

I believe that the shape of the curve has a lot to do with obtaining financing. I gathered that it was more difficult to finance a coach that is older than 10 years old. (I might be wrong about that). It seemed to me that there was not a lot of price difference between say a 1995 and a 2000. (I did not adjust in anyway for body style because each person has their own preference).

So with that said, I have seen a lot of variation since I bought my coach. It may be me, but it seems that the price of used coaches (all years) have declined another 10-20% in the past few years. That may be because the economy but my guess is that more folks are going for the huge pickup truck / monster trailer type of RV. In the RV parks that I frequent, there are more and more of these type rigs it seems.

On the other hand, the prices for new Newells have continued to rise....and that has not seemed to slow the sales...so I guess there are some folks willing to pay to have the newest / nicest.

Anyway those are my thoughts.

[qcj]

The 99 Newell I bought was from MOT. I live in Nacogdoches so it was convenient for me to keep an eye on the coaches they got in. I looked for about 6 or 8 months before finally making a choice. I must say that I waited a little too long and missed several, but in the end happy with what I got.

There is always something that one does not like but can live with. This coach was built for a handicap gentleman. It has a large entry door and I mean large, both wide and tall. My wife and I looked at this coach for about two months before making an offer. We liked everything about it except the door, but decided we could live with it.

It needed front tires and tages but the four drives were 10s. It had new one year old batteries so that is good. The head light lens were bright so I figured it must have been stored inside most of it life. It has new body paint with clear coat and not much rust on chassis. So I felt like it had not been driven in salt. Had 115,000 miles so had been driven. The inside was not abused.

So I made an offer on it. I owned a 02 Foretravel and it was part of the trade. They called the owner and finally agreed with a couple more thousand to be paid. So here I am trying to learn as much about Newells as I can. They are a whole lot different from any coach that I have owned in the past. I do feel that a lot of these older coaches are under priced and will increase or at least hold their value. I plan to put ten to fifteen thousand more into it to bring it up to my standards of what I will like. The beauty of it is that you are putting money into something of quality. Chappell

[rheavn]

Chappell,
I'm with you. I believe that prices on the 10 to 15 year old coaches have dropped below what the value of what you are getting. I don't see the prices rising, but I do see them stabilizing. Good luck with your coach & hope you're as happy with your as we are with ours.

[kb0zke]

I started looking at Newells pretty late in our research, and the one thing that stuck out for me on the price was the dearth of coaches to compare. I believe that Newell has yet to build coach #1500, so that means that there are only a few coaches of any given year out there, and of those, only a few are for sale at any given time. NADA doesn't even list Newells, PPL doesn't show any, and MOT has five of five different years and five different prices. This really make it hard for either a buyer or a seller to have any idea of what is a fair price for a coach.

We bought a Foretravel from a private party who really needed the coach gone. I was able to get some good advice from several people, and NADA did have a price for it, so we had some guidance. Yes, we probably could have gotten the coach for less (and probably should have offered less) but we made what we thought was a fair offer. The sellers apparently thought so, too, since they immediately accepted it.

I suppose that one way to go would be to find a coach that directly competed with the Newell in question and use the pricing information for that as at least a starting point. That would give a reality check, but not much more than that. As Tom says, the condition of the coach has a lot to do with the price. Tires and batteries can easily eat up most of $10,000, and if the refrigerator needs to be replaced, or the television set, even more is gone.

One bit of advice that I've gotten from many people is to make what you consider to be a reasonable offer on any coach that you are seriously considering. If the seller says "NO!" then you are no worse off than you were before. If the seller says anything else you may be able to work a deal. You never know until you make an offer.