Annual cost prior to turning a wheel (1 Viewer)

[Waitforme]

Would anyone care to share what they reckon the annual cost is for their MH / PVC ?

I'm not looking at depreciation ( although likely to be biggest chunk) I'm wondering real world figures for servicing / hab check / insurance / AA / and any other annual type costs.
I'm going to try and get a 5 year total cost and see how that works out against how many nights I could hire one for.

Muchas thanks

Kenny.

 

[Lenny HB]

For ours, Insurance £390, but will go up by £62 this year I will need to include breakdown cover (currently covered by Fiat), Damp check £60 don't have a habitation check I do that myself. Service by local independent every two years depending on mileage light service £120, full service £240. Only other cost is all the bits & pieces I keep fitting. Spend between 120 to 150 nights away in a year.

 

[funflair]

I would say £1500 to £2000 per year would cover service and repair MOT insurance and a percentage of major replacement like tyres etc, depreciation is actually minimal as we bought after someone else had lost a chunk of cash.

Martin

I should add our van is on a heavy commercial chassis with 6 wheels so not the cheapest to run.

 

[two]

I have no idea.
If I worried about things like that, I wouldn't bother.
What matters is that there is still money left in the bank at the end of each month.

 

[deleted-member02]

£340 insurance & breakdown (combined cover)
£400 servicing, mot & maintenance
£100 habitation (average annual spend on broken bits, do own hab check)
£250 rfl
£50 cleaning products
£000 depreciation, might even be turning a small profit
£1,140 or thereabouts, cam-belt and tyres every few years, so maybe couple hundred each year on top...

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[AG 2602]

For us it’s more about the freedom of just being able to go away at the drop of a hat. I don’t think you really get that option if your hiring.
We have only just got into this but already we are planning longer trips North Wales/ Scotland but also could be away more locally every weekend in Spring/Summer.
The initial cost is a bit scary as it all seems to come at once and there always seems to be things you need to add! We’re pretty much set up for this year so then it’s tax insurance and repairs. Which I guess could add up but we don’t plan on getting on a plane this/next year so we will save on those trips!
We were advised to hire one before we bought but to be honest we had a good ideal that we would like it and thankfully we do..

 

[ambulancekidd]

A motorhome will depreciate very slowly as long as its looked after.
In my humble opinion these vehicles do better for being used as often as possible & running them right through the winter is easy due to modern insulation & amazing heating systems oh & you can end up getting a site or CL all to yourself!
This way you get maximum value for your hard earned cash.
Also if you can keep your moho at home instead of a storage area, its easier to check that everything remains dry & I like to heat my moho gently in the winter when its not in use, of course others may disagree with my opinion, that what makes this particular forum so interesting & there is an awful lot of good advice whenever you need it.

Robert.

 

[Lenny HB]

Didn't think about tyres so another £600 every 2 years.

 

[rb62]

Apparently my budget is £1500.....and I havn't spent it all this year
I wonder if I can carry it over

 

[mikebeaches]

Ball park estimate circa £1.5k per annum, without depreciation, but with all servicing carried out by Fiat (chassis) and approved Rapido dealer for the habitation side.

Oh, and stored at home.

Difficulty with hiring:

- Availability at short notice and general associated admin and bureaucracy.

- Packing ALL your 'stuff' for EVERY trip, rather than storing many items on board for a convenient get away.

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[Reallyretired]

We pay £430 per annum for storage as we don't have space at home. Insurance about £350, don't pay for hab checks, servicing/MOT about £150. Tyres about £100 per annum. Tax £160.

 

[funflair]

Forgot about storage it all adds up doesn't it

Martin

 

[CazPaul]

Forgot about storage it all adds up doesn't it

Martin

How much does storage cost Martin?I

 

[funflair]

How much does storage cost Martin?I

500 notes indoors access anytime I want to work polish fiddle whatever.

Martin

 

[Just smiffy]

Mine costs about €2000 in red wine alone....

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[CazPaul]

500 notes indoors access anytime I want to work polish fiddle whatever.

Martin

I wish we had something similar around here, it would be perfect.

 

[Jagtazman]

£165 Tax
£250 Service MOT
£180 Hab check
£365 Insurance
£340 Storage
£60 Metatrak
£90 Gas Bottles

 

[suavecarve]

£400 insurance and euro break down
£165 tax
First service was about 400 i think (got half of it done in Austria)
No tyres yet (2 years old)
Parked on the driveway
No hab checks, i ll deal with that if i have to when i have to.

Costs of holidays
Europe 105* days this year. Total cost £25 for France Passion and maybe up to £100 for aires and possibly £300 for campsites, but we have done it for free before. £40 for gas, nothing for water and electricity. Diesel £600.
UK Maybe 20 days at £200 for the lot (if i am lucky)

* Brexit dependant upon how many days we may or may not be allowed.

So about £1750 for 130 days holiday, I exclude all food and copious amounts of wine. Reckon the van is worth pretty close to what we paid for it (if i dont part exchange)
I reckon i would be lucky to get a fortnight away for that sort of money if going on a package deal.

 

[Geistguy]

Perhaps it's just me but I never consider the cost. Whatever it is it wouldn't be as much as the equivalent cost of hotels - or as much fun.

 

[DangerMousy]

About £1.6k per year for us:
Clubs & Subscriptions £50
New Equipment £456
Improvements £159
Maintenance £337
MOT £37
Tax £250
Insurance £280
Breakdown £62 (won't have this in the future as we're changing bank accounts soon and it'll be covered on that)

One thing I notice is that I need to stop buying new stuff! (the past couple of years its actually been closer to £250 a year....the £800+ of equipment we bought in 2016 when we bought the MH is still skewing the average a bit).

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[ctc]

Mine costs about €2000 in red wine alone....

Her gin costs more than that.

 

[Jonno1103]

I don't think comparing ownership with hiring is very realistic. Hiring includes boundaries... unless you spend more in order to travel abroad also the vans are mostly new or nearly new as many hire firms replace their stock after only 12 months now and reputable hire firms will maintain a vehicle regardless of cost.

Then there's the question of choice, mainly you'll either have Swift Escape, Autotrail Tribute or Rollerteam. I know one company which hire in Yorkshire who have moved away from the former as they're not up to it.

On average you'll pay between £1500-£2000 to mainly hire an entry level but very decent family van during the peak months for a couple of weeks, you then need to factor in travel, fuel and possibly site costs so if you're off to Spain you're looking at around £3k.

£3,000 for two weeks... If under retirement age and you hire in a similar way as you would use an owned van you're still looking at over 8k per annum.

To buy, even a finance outlay of around £400-£500 a month on top of yearly checks, RFL & insurance would come in more than £2k cheaper allowing you to have greater purchasing choice and ultimately to go where and when you wanted to... Which essentially is what it's all about.

I wholeheartedly support the concept of try before you buy but if it's an "instead of" then it's not particularity cost effective in the same way hiring a boat on the Norfolk Broads is.

 

[DangerMousy]

Some very good points by @Jonno1103 in the post above.

We work full time but we still manage to get 2 x 2 weeks or 1 x 2 weeks + 1 x 3 weeks away in the MH each year, plus a number of weekends. I've no idea how much that would cost to hire....but I'm guessing its a lot more than the yearly overheads of having our own MH.

Other non-money things to factor in when hiring: hire periods are often fixed and you can't usually pick the MH up until lunchtime/early afternoon, and you'll probably have to return it by lunchtime when your hire period ends. So if you're heading abroad then you'll need to plan your tunnel/ferry times to allow that for that (rather than taking the cheapest/most convenient time). You'll also need to have a handover from the hire company each time you pick one us as you're unlikely to get the same MH each time so there will be new systems to learn each time. You may not even get a layout that works for you every time (great for trying out to see what you like, not so great if you've just started a 3 week trip and are already fed up of making the up every night).

For me what makes motorhoming so attractive is the lack of packing/preparation before you go away somewhere. There's no trying to fit everything in suitcases, lugging them to the car, then from the car to somewhere else. Because its sat there pretty much ready to go with all our holiday stuff already in there, all we have to do is fill the tanks, put our clothes in the wardrobe, food in the fridge, bikes on the back then off we go. We make sure we work from home on departure day so we do the last minute things before we start work in the morning and are usually out the door and on our way within 15 mins of turning the computers off.

 

[Waitforme]

Thanks for the detailed responses folks.
It's looking like approx £1500 annually should be ball park cost.
I didn't think hiring would be cost effective but also thought that the annual cost would be more.
I'll be using it plenty when I retire in the next year / 18 months so buying it is

 

[M-J]

Easier to estimate over 2 years because of tyres and servicing.

I would say about £2000 -£2500 over 2 years