How long to sell a caravan ?

[FrintonMike]

We part exchanged our caravan in October 2011 and the dealer has only this week sold it.
The price has been steadily reduced until was sold. We received £5500 in p/t ex and it was sold for £7250, at least that was the last advertised price.
Is 2 years for a dealer to sell a caravan usual ?

 

[RogerL]

It's not good economics !
When I part-exchanged my leaking Bailey in February this year it was on Ebay 10 days later, in a different part of the country and no mention of the damp!

 

[woodsieboy]

When we bought our current van,our trade in was sold before we drove away with the new one,we think the dealer had a buyer lined up before we part exchanged,and once we arrived with the caravan he phoned the buyer to view our van.

 

[ProfJohnL]

Hello Mike

Its the laws of supply and demand!

As with any product it will only sell if someone wants to buy it. Factors such as price or at least perceived value will be be very relevant.

There are no hard and fast rules about the speed of stock turn-round, but it is always best to keep it as fast as possible.

Sometimes a trader may make a mistake and take in a product that no one wants and the only way to shift it is to radically discount it.

 

[TD42]

sounds to me that the dealer was being exceptionaly greedy in his original pricing, if after many price reductions he still made a profit of more than £1750 2 years later plus of course his original profit on the sale of the van you bought

 

[otherclive]

sounds to me that the dealer was being exceptionaly greedy in his original pricing, if after many price reductions he still made a profit of more than £1750 2 years later plus of course his original profit on the sale of the van you bought

I would agree with TD42's view, as clearly the dealer didnt undersatnd his market place.

 

[RogerL]

Dealers do have a bit of an issue with trading on p/x caravans - something like 2/3 of all new caravans sold are fixed bed layouts - but the secondhand market still prefers a selection of 2-berth and non-fixed bed family caravans.

So some part-exchanged layouts are much harder to sell on than others.

Am I feeling sorry for dealers? No !!

 

[MichaelE]

Im pretty sure the dealer knew what he was doing? If the dealer had held it in stock for 2 years then surely he wasnt that bothered about selling it or he would have reduced the price earlier?
Did he use it just to keep his stock levels up? I know they use this tactic so it looks like you have lots of stock and a busy site, no-one wants to go into a caravan dealer with no stock do they?
Another tactic is to keep this priced high then a model he wants to sell is just a little lower so it looks like a bargain compared to the other one?
Use this method in the car trade all the time so i doubt that the caravan industry is any different?

 

[Dustydog]

Mik3

.mike
What make and model was it?

Our dealer sold our last px the day after we collected the Wyoming.
Like Woodsieboy I suspect a customer was lined up. Tbey sold it for £1000 more than the px.
The px was a fixed bed model.

 

[FrintonMike]

The caravan was a Abbey Vogue GTS