When looking for a caravan for your first time it’s a difficult choice to make, often first time buyers aren’t always able to spend as much as you’d like so always ruling out a caravan due to defects that a new buyer can live with will often be accepted but lots of us on here seem to be seasoned caravaners who being older have gradually upgraded to better and better vans and if buying now wouldn’t dream of buying a van with some faults that other people would be happy to accept, unfortunately we haven’t all got 20k -30k to spend on a caravan that they will probably use half a dozen times a year so accepting some faults is the norm if for instance you’ve got a very low budget, lots of faults you can fix yourself for little cost but damp issues are often major issues that need more skills but if the price you pay is all you’ve got then can you live with it, my previous caravan was a bailey ranger that was about 10 years old when I bought it, I bought it at a time when I really wanted something better than we had and I missed obvious signs of damp in one corner, it was however ok to live with and in the 5 years I had it there was no change so it didn’t get any worse, I paid around 6k and at the time I wasn’t in a position to pay more, we loved it and when the time came we sold it privately and was honest about the damp and the buyer said he’d take the chance as it was all he could afford and I’m sure he’ll be happy, I sold it for 3k and if it didn’t deteriorate and was ok for a couple of years he won’t have been ripped off, the OP needs to decide if he can repair it himself, get someone else to do it, live with it or walk away, unfortunately there’s not enough new or used caravans about currently, it’s not an easy decision to make, you might be paying all its worth and all you’ve got, if you can afford a check by a technician then great go for it, if by the time you’ve found a technician to get to it you’ll probably find it’s gone and you start looking again, I’m not saying buy any old rubbish but it’s without doubt a sellers market so best of look finding a bone dry pristine caravan that’s going dirt cheap, I’m not sure there’s many like that about this year.
BP