Everything You Need to Know About Selling Your RV

Painting

Let's talk about paint. We did not paint. No, we know several people who have painted because historically, RVs have been a little cramped and dark with heavy wood, dark wall colors, and dark furniture.

Many people we know have completely repainted the inside of their RVs. Mostly white or some like we've seen blues and grays and greens.

If you paint your RV, you will have to sell it to a private party. Because we've heard from people that have painted their RVs, dealerships don't want to touch them.

Right now, newer RVs are getting brighter. But they're coming that way from the factory, so all of that is covered by warranty.

If you do something as drastic as painting, know you're not going to get a return on investment.

Modifications and valances

If you have been with us, you know that we take valances off. We were the leaders of the anti-valance coalition until now. The first thing we did was take the valances out of our RV—literally the first thing.

It looked so much better. It gave us more window space and whatnot. Again, no attention to detail, and we didn't care. We didn't fill holes because I didn't have the wallpaper to redo the walls, and we weren't going to paint the walls. There were just holes in the walls, and we didn't care.

However, that was one of the major things that the dealership that bought our RV had a problem with.

We did not have time to sell our RV via private party sale. We would have liked to because we know we would have gotten more from it, but it wasn't in the cards.

The dealership gave us a hard time about not having valances. The problem is that the valances were permanent, and we had to destroy some of them to get them out. We didn't store them. We didn't take them with us. They nipped us for that.

Decorations

Behind the bed, we did the peel-and-stick wallpaper, and it started to fade a little bit, so I was going to peel it off so it would be just what it was before. But there was a slight stickiness to it, and I didn't have time to do some Goo Gone on to take it all off. I don't know if we got dinged for that at all.

There were a couple of things that we put up that we probably could have taken down. We did some stick-on tiles in the bathrooms. I don't know if they cared about that.

Expensive upgrades

I did want to talk about some stuff that we added that we actively spent money on. As we said at the beginning, you do kitchens and bathrooms with houses. Those are the two big ones where you'll get some or most of your money back on that renovation.

We redid all of the furniture in the living room. We did a couch, a dinette, and the captain's chairs. All of that was way better than what was in there. They didn't care.

It was the same type of furniture already, so it wasn't like we took out a couch and put in theater seating or anything.

At one point, we had talked about taking the dinette out and putting my desk there. If we had done that, that would have been a ding. That would have been a no, thank you. Because what are people expecting in an RV? Somewhere to sit and eat.

Also, talking about things that we added to it, there were things that we spent money on that we felt added value. Ultimately, they could not have cared less about it. We love our SnapPads, and we put them on our RV immediately. The dealership didn't care if we didn't have them there. They were not cheap.

We also installed a steering stabilizer. The dealership didn't care. We installed a Magne Shade up on the windshield, which was great. They didn't care. Again, that's like a $600-700 modification. So if you're doing this to your RV, think about the future.

Planning ahead

If you're going to have your RV for years, you don't care about anybody else, do whatever you want. You'll deal with it down the road.

But if you're in something maybe for just a year or two and you know that it's just going to be a year or two, maybe get the stuff that you know you're going to use and you know you're going to love.

This RV is a 2019, so it's still like it's super new, but it's fancy new, and it's not as egregious as the others. I have a hard time modifying new things. So, we are looking forward to making this rig a little more customized to us and how we live with our three kids.

Selling an RV

Have you sold an RV? Did you get what you expected from it? Let us know your experiences in the comments below.