Advantage of buying new is that hopefully, the warranty will cover non-maintenance items for a year or so. Disadvantage is that with many companies, you are doing their quality control during that first year and finding all the things they should have caught during construction. I have talked to friends that bought new coaches in the $1/4-$1/2 million range and it was in the shop being repaired 25% of the time during their first year. That could REALLY play havoc with someone that was living in their coach. Some manufacturers have clauses in their warranties that give them an out if you are living in your coach full time. Obviously, they don't think their products will stand up to that amount of usage.
Right on Michael. Years ago I purchased a new Country Coach and spent most of the next 18 months is shops correcting 75 serious warranty items. I promised myself and wife that I would never buy another new coach.
I forgot to tell you he bought the "2014 American Eagle 45T"!
Remember these Harry; "There's a sucker born every minute", "A fool and his money are soon parted" and most important, "It is morally wrong to allow a fool to keep his money".
To get what a friend of mine's wife wanted, he just purchased a new Dynasty. Went to pick it up and the A/Cs did not work. After thermostat replacement, went back to pick it up and front entry door would not close a latch.
The 06 traded Dynasty had a 100 03S big Aqua Hot and this one has a 450D small Aqua Hot.
Thank goodness for the plethora of people that want to buy SOB and to those that want to buy new, without them a Newell of any reasonably recent vintage would be well out of my pay grade (think pension and Social Security). As it is I get to wile away my retirement fiddling with all the ails of a "vintage" Newell coach, but once fixed those things tend to stay fixed and I get to move on to the next "fix". I get my fix with fixes.
Harry,
I think you already knew what kind of answer you would get from this crowd. Ask a fireman to open a locked door and he will use an ax, ask a locksmith and you get a different result.
Everything above still boils down to the basics of motorhoming. One, things break. You or someone else will work on it. The frustration level depends upon your skill, the support mechanisms in place, and one's tolerance level for unplanned events. Two, they depreciate. They are not investments. Three, you can put lipstick on a pig. Buying new is no guarantee of less trouble. It just looks pretty. Clean carpet, no furniture scuffs, and clean engine bay.
You found us here because we found that the bones of the coaches we purchased were sound enough and the original design was functional enough to warrant us putting the effort into keeping them on the road.
What "NEW" coach would I buy for half mill? Well it would be "NEW" to me. It would be one of two. A 98 to 2002 two slide for around 200 and buy coach pimping items, diesel, and nice camp sites for the leftover 300, or step up to a steerable tag in the 400 range and use the change for diesel. I wouldn't turn my nose up at a Prevost in the same ballpark.
Harry, I know a bunch of folks that were just getting into RV'ing and wanted to find out if they enjoyed the lifestyle, although the majority were looking WAY below the $500,000 mark. Many of them bought new because they thought it would require less unexpected maintenance and those items would be covered under warranty.
A few didn't like the experience and gave up RV'ing. The remainder learned a lot very quickly about what they liked and disliked about an RV. I had owned three Airstreams and a Safari before purchasing my Newell. With each purchase I learned more and more about things I did and didn't feel were necessary, the construction techniques that made a difference in how well it stayed together and how much the company listened to its owners to improve their design over the years, and whether the great ideas that were incorporated into their design we so great after all.