Considering buying a caravan

[MrsHarveySpecterV]

Out eldest child starts school in September and we have been looking at prices of holidays for next summer during the school holidays and I am astounded!! £5,500 for a week half board in Majorca or £1,300 for a week self catering in the UK. I have been looking at caravans for sale today and don't know if that would be a better option while our children are small. Does anyone have any experience good or bad of owning a static caravan please?

Just them out of school!

I own one. It's expensive. As well as the initial cost of the caravan you have to pay site fees. Ours are £4K a year, plus gas, water etc. Would you rent it out to others to recoup some money?

I think it might get boring going to the same place.

We had one for a couple of years. Site fees were £3000 + and in the end we just couldn’t justify the cost each year. Was lovely when we did use it, but we didn’t half as much as we thought we would and ended up spending a huge amount of money and got nothing back in return as the site we were on also charge £3000 to change ownership if you sell. Do your research, if it’s something you would make full use of and you can easily afford site fees it can be fantastic.

I knew someone who brought a static, the site fees were very expensive, they got fed up with it after a couple of years, paid 37k for a new caravan, got offered £10k!p when they wanted to sell. So think carefully.

A complete money pit.

We owned one on a Haven Park for 14 years. We had some fabulous times there & obviously loved it (or we would have sold up sooner) but OMG is it expensive!

The caravan to buy was £28k (would be more now) then annual site fees of £5k. Plus rates, plus water, plus electricity bills, plus gas bottles. Maintenance can also be expensive at times.

I’m not trying to put you off - as I say, we loved it - but in no way will it save you money. If you do decide to go ahead, make absolutely certain you have all of the costs written down.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. We would rent it out if we go ahead and buy one but then I know there are costs involved in that too. I'd love to have somewhere I could just go to at short notice etc but my husband is worried about getting bored of the same place.
@stitchmaker85 we don't really want to take them out of school for a holiday but we will see!
Those of you who own caravans or have owned, do you/did you rent them out?

A static caravan? So you would have to go to the same place each time? That doesn’t appeal to me but surely you would just do that if you knew the area and the park and loved it?

We are a family of 5 and go camping in France. Lovely sites with Eurocamp units etc and great facilities near lovely beaches but pretty cheap.

Maybe a towing caravan so you can try different places and go to different European sites?

We have a tourer caravan that we leave on a site, we never tow it.

It's a small site, pay about £500 a year to store it, then £18 a night when we stay. Owner stores them, we let them know when we would be coming and they have it pulled out ready to set up.

Kids love it, so.poss look at tourer rather than static?

I don't rent mine out. It just gets complicated keeping track of who is in it when, sorting cleaning, dealing with damages, insurance etc, not being able to keep your own stuff in there all the time.

I'm following because I'd love to know. I love our caravan holidays.

Sites are around £3.5k (possibly less if in countryside not seaside?)

From what I can gather you rarely if at all get the value back from the purchase of a caravan due to many many fees. Most sites are only open April to October and close for the other months.

But for families, and a lot of people using it, on a site where they allow you to run your caravan down and keep an old caravan for a number of years (some have conditions on age of van) etc. Its fun. But still not a cheap holiday alternative.

We got a touring caravan this year as my DD is just 1 and my partners job makes it hard to plan holidays in advance. We loved it! We have a big awning with it too which doubles the space. We can store it ourselves so that cuts costs but overall a fantastic buy for us.

We have a tourer. We started with a cheap one to try out, loved it so much we took out a loan and upgraded. It has everything we need (kitchen, toilet, shower...) so we often stay on sites that are little more than a field and are therefore cheap (£5 or £10 per night). The kids love it, usually make some friends and amuse themselves for hours doing outdoorsy sorts of things!

But there’s always the option to stay on big sites (Haven type places) with kids clubs, swimming pools, evening entertainment. The most expensive we’ve seen is £50 a night which is still 1/4 of the price of a self catering break, and you can often get deals for doing a whole week.

Thank you, lots for me to speak to DH about!

We camp in France, in our own tent. £400 for the campsite for 10 days, £400 for the ferry. DH pointed out this year we could probably find an Airbnb for a similar price.

The problem with taking termtime holidays is that you have no holiday allowance left for the actual holidays (assuming you work, and are not a teacher or similar term-time job!)

We had tourers for 20+ years. It isn’t cheap and as other have said write all the costs down. Servicing, storage, tyres, insurance, site fees, club fees and see the total. It’s fun but isn’t cheap, we loved it but got feed up with the cleaning, transferring things, slow going etc.

We spent 4k on an old tourer 3 years ago, love it and have had many great holidays including to france. About £130 for a week stay in a nice UK sits, 300euro for 2 weeks in France with pools etc. We've no driveway so pay £400 a year for a dedicated storage place

Another tourer owner here. We’ve been touring for 5 years and love it. We purchased a second hand one first then two years ago bought a new one. The kids love it and make loads of friends. We go away most weekends during the summer and a couple of week long breaks too. Going to take it abroad next year,

We had a tourer when the kids were young,stored it on our drive.I loved it,love having my own things around me.

I was widowed young and wouldn’t tow a caravan.I bought a chalet at Widemouth Bay,it was fab,£2,000 a year site fees,indoor pool,views to die for,my family didn’t use it as much as I thought they would,so I sold it,lost some money but not that much,just furniture which I left.

There are two chalets for sale at the moment there,both in a good position so more than the ones sell for in the back row.

I did rent mine out which easily covered the site fees.my son and family moved to Cornwall several years ago,so they did the changeovers for me.

Personally I wouldn’t get a static caravan because it seems like a money pit.

£1,300 for a week self catering in the UK

Well I don't know what you are looking at but my top price is £850 for August in a 4* Visit Wales graded property! And that's for a detached house with all mod cons!

We considered it too then tossed it off cps of site fees/maintenance etc. Would have bankrupted us because we’d dint want to ren tit out because the entire idea was to use it anytime we wanted!

Yes we have a tourer now. Love it.

When our kids were small we had a trailer tent or did Eurocamp or booked direct with the site as was cheaper. God we loved those holidays.

We bought a brand new tourer in June.We have it sited on the Llyn Peninsula and it costs £1200 a year. The site is literally just a field with a shower, toilets and washing up area.

Site fees for statics are crazy prices and renting it out is a risk as some people are just plain disrespectful.A few years back we rented a Prestige level caravan at a Haven site which was privately owned and someone had clearly been smoking in it, I’d have been fuming had it been mine.

We do plan on touring in time but for now we are quite happy to go to our site, it’s an absolutely beautiful place and very relaxing . We have 2 dogs and so we can holiday without worrying about them being looked after elsewhere.

Our brand new 4 berth has a fixed double bed and we got it discounted to I think 16500. I reckon we spent another 1.5 setting it up including mandatory security devices for the insurance.

We have a static on the coast. Site fees are 3k a year so reasonable. Caravan was 60k new.

It seems like a lot. But realistically it’s 60 minutes from home, in an amazing location, beautiful quiet private site with a lovely community feel. We are there a lot. Between us and family/friends it’s in use about 50% of the time, so worth the investment.

I was sceptical at first but for us it was worth it. However, it’s only worth it because we spend so much time there - i wouldn’t have done it for sporadic holidays.

We toured with our van for years but now have it permanently sited on lovely park in the countryside. It's only 30 mins from home so we go every weekend and every school holiday (teacher). Site fees are £1700 per annum. Our site is open all year and we even go through winter. We have built our own little garden and we love it.

We loved touring when we and the kids were younger, but get so much more use from our van now.