Buying a used motorhome or campervan? WATCH THIS FIRST!

So, you want to buy a motorhome or a campervan, or you want to upgrade the one that you have already got. You look at your budget and you know that secondhand is the best choice for you, so you pop down to your local motorhome dealership like we are here at Oaktree Motorhome, and you are confronted by 30-odd vans. Where the heck do you even start? Well, my friend, you start with grabbing a cup of tea or coffee and a piece of paper and a pen, And you work through this video with me. First thing is seat belts. Very first thing that I want you to look at is how many seat belts do you need. Now, that might be you and your partner, that might just be you on your own, it might be you and the kids, and it might be you and your partner and occasionally you want to take your grandkids with you. So you need to look at how many seat belts you might need. Most vans have a maximum of 4, but occasionally, like my van, I've got— actually got 5 seat belts. If you want more than 5, you are going to struggle with a motorhome. Top tip for you: do not get talked into retrofitting seat belts. It's not that easy to do, and there's a huge issue about how legal they are, even if you get it fitted by an approved company. So please, please find a van that's got the correct number of seat belts that you need when you're going off on your trips. Next, look at berths, because just because your van has got 4 or 5 seat belts does not mean it has got 4 or 5 usable berths or beds. And this is where, again, you need to look at what you are going to do with the van. So when we bought our very first motorhome, I knew that I wanted 2 separate sleeping areas, one obviously for me and my husband and one for our daughter. I wanted those 2 sleeping areas to be as far away from each other as they possibly can, because our daughter, even in her teenage years, hated sleeping Camping in the dark and slept with the light on, which drove me insane. So we wanted to be as far apart from each other as we possibly could, and I also wanted to give her her own space. So like, her being in the living room wasn't going to work for us, so we ended up with an above-cab bed for her, and then we had a bed at the back of the van, and that's the layout that worked for us. As it turns out, it wasn't particularly brilliant, and we moved on, but that's what we thought we wanted in our first van. So you need to figure out how many berths you need, And also, if the kids are sleeping in, say, the living area and you've got the fixed bed, how do you sit up if they go to bed early? All of those things are worth considering. So you might want to look at something that's got, say, bunk beds, and then you have the living area as your bed. Or if you've got 2 older kids, they might not be happy sharing the same space. So it's really important to think about the sleeping arrangements, but not just the sleeping, the actual living in the van whilst people are sleeping. Even if it's just you, or you and your partner, there are some brilliant van designs that are smaller that have got the whole bed drops over the living room, but if one of you is a night owl and one of you is an early bird, how does that work? If one of you wants to get up and do some work or watch TV or do whatever, the whole of the living room has been taken up. So how does that work? So you do need to figure out how you're going to use the space if somebody else is in bed at the same time. That's really important to consider. So once you've got your belts and your berths, the next thing to look at is your maximum weight. Can you drive a vehicle over 3.5 tonnes. If you took your license before the cutoff date in 1997, then you've probably got grandfather rights, although not every license had them, and also they tend to expire when you get near your 70th birthday. So please do check your license before you start committing to bigger vehicles. If you haven't got the, the rights to drive a vehicle over 3.5 tonnes, then you can either choose whether you want to do your C1 and pay for it, Or are you going to stay restricted to a vehicle under or at 3.5 tonnes maximum weight? And that might mean that you have a much smaller payload than some other people. Now, if you are a couple who travel with kids and perhaps a dog, if there's 4 or more of you in the van, you're gonna need a big, big payload. And this is where you might want to consider a bigger vehicle and taking your C1. Now, if you don't understand what payload is, I will try to break this down for you. So a vehicle like the vehicle I'm in right now, the motorhome I'm in right now, weighs something. Just as it came to me, sitting there on the forecourt, the vehicles weigh something. And then each one of those vehicles will have a maximum weight that it is allowed to be. Now, for the majority of motorhomes, 6 meters to about 7, 7.5 meters, although that's a really big generalization, but the majority of them is about 3.5 tons. So Some smaller motorhomes can only be up to like 3.3 or 3.2, so don't just assume it's up to 3.5. And then obviously the bigger the vehicle gets, the more likely it is that they will need more of a payload, which means they will be above 3.5 tons. So you've got the difference between what the vehicle physically weighs when it's sitting there on the forecourt and what its maximum weight is. That is called the payload. Now when you buy a new motorhome, there's a whole thing about how The weight as it comes out includes the weight of the driver, and it includes maybe a gas bottle, and it includes some fluid in the engines, and it includes, you know, 6.7 litres of water, and it's all really complicated. But you're not looking at brand new motorhomes, you're looking at secondhand motorhomes. So these are already built, they're already sitting there on the forecourt, and they already have perhaps an awning fitted, they have already got a solar panel fitted, maybe even a second leisure battery. They've already got extra bits on. So it's irrelevant what it says on the manufacturer's website right now because they've been altered, and you need to accept the fact that they will probably weigh more, especially if they've got bits added, than the manufacturer's website says that they do. So you need to know what that weight is as it's there. Now, there's a very high chance the dealer hasn't taken it to a weighbridge, so one thing that you will need to do when and if you buy the vehicle is go and take that vehicle to a weighbridge so you know exactly what payload you have got. One thing you can do is have a look on the manufacturer's website to see what the vehicle should weigh when it came out of the dealership. Then you look to see, has it got an awning fitted? Has it got an extra solar panel or a solar panel? Has it got an extra leisure battery fitted? If it has, you know that the payload that's listed on the website is gonna be less because obviously more things have been added to it and that's already eaten into the payload. And if the less is already too little for you, then that van isn't right for you. You know, if you think about yourself and your husband, say 75 kilos each, that's 150. If you've got 2 kids, if they're teenagers, 60, 65, 70 kilos each maybe, that's kind of 300 just in 4 of you. And then you've got a dog, and if your payload on your van, you've only got 350, I mean, you've got no space then to put your bedding, your pots, your pans, shoes, anything. And that's why it's really, really important to understand what the very bare minimum payload you can accept is. And if you can't find a van within that payload bracket, you're gonna need to go bigger. And generally, it's for bigger families or people who travel with more people that will need really big payloads because you've got more people on board, and that's just common sense. Another thing to be really mindful of is your bed layout. You know, so you might have decided you want a bed here for the kids and a bed here for you, but what kind of bed for you do you want? Do you want an end lounge that you make up every day, which is what I had in my van? I've now turned it into a proper bed. Do you want a drop-down bed? Do you want a proper fixed island bed that you can walk around and both of you have got room, so one of you doesn't have to roll over the other one to get in and out of it? Do you want a drop— a pull-down bed that goes over and uses that space more effectively so your van can be smaller? It's really important to know the kind of bed layout that you want and how important that is to you. If having a fixed bed is the most important thing to you in the world, then you just completely disregard any van that doesn't have a fixed bed that you like. Simple. Next, really important, where are you going to store it when you're not using it? Unless you're going to live in it full-time, you're going to need to store that van when it's not in use. Are you planning to put it on your drive? If so, is there a maximum length that can fit on your drive? Are you planning to leave it in the street? Is there select parking? Do you have to have it in a certain size to go in a parking spot? Or are you planning to put it in a secure storage compound, in which case, have you got a restricted length or anything like that at the storage compound so Some of them have only got like an 8 meters max or something like that, so you can take that into account when you are looking at vehicles. Another thing to be really mindful of is insurance. Now obviously you need to take into account under or over 3.5 tons, but also, you know, going up to a 4.5-ton vehicle if you've never driven one before, even if you've got it on your license, can make a huge, huge insurance jump. So that's something if you are looking at getting a bigger vehicle particularly, make sure you can actually drive it and make sure you can then afford the insurance premium because some of them are Huge. Another thing to be really clear about is how are you going to pay for the van? Do you have max budget of cash that's sitting there in your bank? Are you going to finance it? Do you need a loan? If you do, how much of a loan are you going to get, and how much is that going to be to pay back monthly? Really, really important to know this stuff before you get sucked into a newer van that costs an extra £10,000, £15,000, £20,000 that you either can't afford Or you then are going to struggle making the repayments for. Do not get yourself into trouble buying a van that is more expensive than you have budgeted for. So when you think you've found a vehicle, you think you've found one that you really like, I want you to download the free decision matrix that is below this video and work your way through it. Make sure that it is objectively what you want. There's also a checklist there of things to look at. Now, I need you to be realistic at this point. You are getting a secondhand vehicle, not a brand new vehicle. There will be scratches, there will be snags, there will be things that aren't quite perfect. You are buying a secondhand vehicle, so although the dealer can fix some things if you don't like them, or they can help you try and address some issues if you've got them, they cannot work miracles. That's really important to pass on. Also, the dealers do not have tens of thousands of pounds sitting in these vans. They really, really don't. They've probably got a few thousand at most, and that's got to cover rent or the mortgage on the land that they've got, all the staff, all the electric, all their insurance, all the lights, all the cleaners. Everything else that goes into putting that business together has to come out of the profit from selling the motorhome. So when you go, right, I want this van, I want you to knock £5,000 off it, it's not gonna happen. There just isn't that kind of money in them. But, but there are things that they can do which can help you. Some dealers like Oaktree have their own workshop, so if you say, right, I'd really like a solar panel fitted, or I'd like to upgrade to a lithium battery system, or I'd like an awning fitted, or anything like that that will physically be them helping fit something to make the van more to your custom taste, then that's the kind of thing they can often give you some sort of deal on because that's within their remit. They're obviously— if they don't have some sort of garage or workshop or like that on then that might not be easy and you might want to go to a different dealership. But often those are the kind of deals that you can make. But do check when you find a van that you really like and you're thinking about committing to it, do check what's included in it. Some dealers include things like an electric cable or chock, and some don't, and that's fine, they don't have to. But because it's a secondhand van, often they came with them. So that's the kind of thing that you could say, do you have an electric cable that I could have please? Do you have a pair of chocks that I could have please? And although they don't have to give you them, it's really nice. It's like something that they can add in that'll save you £50, and these little things all add up. So it's definitely worth asking what's included with them. Now, when you are looking for a dealership, obviously go around and have a look at several of them, but please do your homework because not all dealerships are created equally. First of all, have a look at Trustpilot. You want to make sure that people's reviews of their experience with that dealer are positive. Then you want to ask them about things like their warranty. Now, the biggest benefit of buying a vehicle through a dealer is you get a warranty, a guarantee if things break. And you want to find a dealer that's got some sort of workshop or garage on site, or they're affiliated with, so that if something does break, they don't have to send you off 700 miles in the other direction. You can go back to them, and it's worth traveling a little way to find one that's got those kind of facilities. So that if something does happen within the warranty period, they can help you fix it. You also want to find one that ideally can do a HAB check for you, make sure that one of those is done, and ideally if you can, get them to do like an engine service and an MOT for you so you know that the vehicle is in really good shape before you buy it. I hope you found that useful. Don't forget that you can download your checklist of things to look for and your decision buying matrix on the link in the notes, and if you found this video useful, a thumbs up is always very much appreciated. Thank you for your time, and I'll see you on the next video. Bye! Bye!