There are millions of ways to make money in life. Some of them are brilliant, others are terrible. One classic way to earn a living is through the process of buying and selling items. In the automotive world, this is often known as “flipping.”
Lots of people buy cars and sell them on for a profit. To all intents and purposes, they are car dealers. You may have thought about doing that too, but it’s a saturated market as you’ve perhaps noticed. There is one alternative: flipping motorhomes.
It’s a niche market. The profits you make are higher than what you might usually make buying and selling cars. But, how easy is it to make a profit flipping motorhomes? And can you even make a profit at all, or will you just be wasting your time (and money)? I decided to experiment by trying it out. Read on to learn more about how I got on!
Assess the market
As you would do with buying and selling cars, you first need to assess the market. It’s a crucial first step because you need to determine how viable the exercise is for you.
With that in mind, I spent a few hours online researching the makes and models of motorhomes that people buy. I also checked out which ones sold like hotcakes and the ones to avoid.
Top tip: if you want to use eBay for research, I recommend signing up to Terapeak. It’s a data mining company that many people use for eBay research. It only cost me £19.99 for a month’s subscription, and was worth the money. I also used it to sell a few unwanted items I’ve got at home for the best possible price!
Get some money together
As you can imagine, it also helps if you’ve got the money available to buy a motorhome! Sellers aren’t going to give you their prized motorhomes on a sale or return basis you know!
In my case, I had some money saved up, so I used that. You could always borrow the cash, but you’ll have to pay it back even if you make a loss on the motorhome you flip.
Find a (good) bargain
Once you’ve got the money and have set a budget, it’s now time to find a motorhome to buy! The object of the exercise is to haggle over the price with the seller. One way you can do this is by looking for models on the market during the colder months of the year. So, look for motorhomes for sale in Winter, for example.
Don’t go and buy the first one you see! Go look at a few and think about which one you think has the most profit potential. The last thing you want to do is buy something that’s only fit for scrap.
Selling for profit
The last stage of my experiment was to sell the motorhome I bought for a profit! Before I sold it, I gave it a good clean and had it serviced by a specialist. Let’s face it; no-one wants to buy a dodgy motorhome!
To get an idea of the value, I checked out the http://www.sellmymotorhomefast.co.uk/value/ website. As it turns out, they offered me the best price for the model I bought.
Of course, there will be times where you’ll make more money selling on a different platform. In my case, I’m a few quid better off! So, yes it is possible to flip motorhomes for a profit as I’ve demonstrated.
