We'd like to hire a motorhome to see if it would suit our family and the type of holidays we have, before potentially considering purchasing one. I've been looking into the cost of hiring a 4/5 berth motorhome for a week in august and the cost is coming out at around £900, which I was a little surprised by. My question is, are they worth it? Does anyone else on here hire one regularly or do you just hire it once to find out if you like it then buy one?
Thanks for the link happybonzo - their luxury fleet look lovely! Prefer the prices of the budget fleet though! They look like a nice company to deal with.
Thanks for the insurance tip snowy - that's a scarily massive excess!
Gotta remember that if you`re hiring something that cost well over £40,000 new they have to get the cost back somehow, so it`ll never be cheap to hire. I looked at hiring a couple of years back, a decent quality 4 berth coachbuilt was between £600 and £1000 depending on time of year (skool hols)
Look at the price of a hire boat on the Norfolk Broads, very similar money for something decent.
I would recommend paying the money for something good as a try-out, if you hire some old shed it`ll knock the enjoyment out of your hols before you have started, and may well put you off the whole thing entirely. Seen plenty people do this with tenting, how many people have you talked to that`s had a bad experience in a leaky tent that`s put them off for life? (or their missus says "no way" after having had a cold wet weekend during their Girl Guides years?)
------------- Life is one big holiday, only broken up by as little work as possible
Just a thought, but does anyone hire out older motor homes? After all, that's what most people end up buying. It's all very well hiring a lovely new one, but it's not going to compare all that well to one that's a decade old. Someone out there will know, I'm sure?
..agree with all said comments. A mate of mine has just invested some 25k in an all whistles and bells hymer which puts my tent to shame. A point worth noting though if you do go down the motor caravan route - keep your pop up tent in case you find an idyllic pitch and you want to drive into town. (A pop up tent leaves you your spot...think sunloungers and germans) I like germans by the way!
We're new to motorhoming & this our first post on the forum. I thought I would share our (very) short experience with the rest of you. Some will call us crazy, some brave, some wise, & some plain stupid! Maybe in a few months time I'll report back with what I think we are!
Approx three weeks ago I was in a local boatyard perusing the boats I'd been longing to own for the last 20 years, but as I was looking around it dawned on me that buying & running a boat in this country would be a complete waste of money until the full effects of global warming kick in fully & allow me to use for more than a few days a year. What I really needed was a motorhome! We could use it all year round & it would cost a fraction of the cost of running a boat.
So, we started looking around at 'entry-level' MH's. 15 year old circa £10k. One of our criteria was that we needed forward facing rear seats with seatbelts for our two baby seats.
We soon learned that for our meagre budget our choice was limited on older motorhomes & a very nice chap at a local dealer suggested that if we bought a newer'van we could finance it over longer & we'd have more range to select from. Did I want to spend £20k on a motorhome though?
I did my research & found that if I bought a motorhome that was desirable as a renter, I could get a reasonable number of rents per year (estimate 8-10 weeks). This should go a long way towards paying for the owning & running of our motorhome.
So, yesterday we took delivery of our £27,000 six berth Swift 630L! A loooong way from our original £10k four berth budget!
I hasten to add that this route is most definitely not for most people, but as I'm used to renting out property including a holiday home in Spain, I just approached it with the same business perspective. I'm also not connected with any of the rental companies.
As I said at the start this is still very early days, but we'd already been given our first booking last week before we'd even pick up the motorhome, so the signs are promising.
With regard to the comments about insurance excess, don't forget you don't pay it out unless you break it. It's only held as a security deposit.
Also, some of the rentals companies offer a 'try-before-you-buy' facility. Indeed the dealer I bought from is offering to do this with our van to potential buyers whereby they rent out our mh for £250 for a weekend & if they like it buy from him they get their £250 back.
I agree with others, make sure you get a decent motorhome and you will not be disappointed. We have just returned having had 3 weeks in Cornwall and the weather was very kind to us. However, I thought it worth mentioning the cost of diesel which is not cheap at the moment. The local supermarkets had reduced their prices to £1.30, whilst Texaco were still charging £1.36 per litre. For us filling up at Texaco cost an extra £6.00. Whilst we stayed on 3, 5 Star sites which cost us £300 for three weeks the cost of our diesel exceeded that cost. The advantage of a motorhome is that where every you go you have everything with you and we find this convenient. Good luck.
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Topic: Hire cost of motorhomes
They look like a nice company to deal with.
