States we've Traveled

States we've Traveled

Tribute to Ms Southwind

Tribute to Ms Southwind

Thursday, January 18, 2007

3rd Time is the charm - Buying the motor home



We woke up to a very cold and windy day, but we were still determined to go look at this motor home. So we got up early and headed out to go look at a Southwind 30' motor home to see if it could be our new home. We arrived, introduced ourselves and the sales man took us to see it. The sales man left us to explore and examine her. I looked the inside over. Every little nook and cranny, opened and shut the cabinets. checked for any signs of leakage and dry rot.

We checked her out from top to bottom. While i stayed inside and imagined what we could do with her, ( i was impressed, i could make her into a nice home) hubby went outside and checked the outside. He climbed on the roof and checked it out for damage, crawled underneath and examined her, then he raised the hood and looked at the engine. He was impressed (good sign).

The next step was the test drive, she wouldn't start, uh oh .. the service dept came out and put a jump starter on her and within seconds she was running. We left the parking lot, and she rode really smooth, i sat at the dinning table to see how she rode, then i jumped in the back in the bed, the real test .. wow she passed with flying colors, others i had ridden in were pretty bouncy back there. She drove like a brut, her engine seemed to just pure. Could barely hear her running. She is a older model but appears to be in good working order. She will need some TLC, but we are willing to give her that. Okay we've decided were interested in purchasing her.

Now it was down to the dirty work of discussing the price. Hubby doesn't like to be apart of my dealing, so he stayed outside and looked her over some more. I had already talked price over the phone and got the dealer to come down before we drove to look at her. But, hey, he came down over the phone and now I had cash in hand, it's the middle of winter and how many people are looking to buy in this weather. After all it's spitting snow flurries! I had did my research and knew what her fair market value was (even with her 2 draw back) and we had agreed ahead of time what we were pretty much willing to pay for her. I went inside and found the sales man, (he was hiding inside because the weather was very cold) The salesman asked me what we thought and I replied, it's okay, needs some work and cleaning, but if the price was right we would be able to fix some things I made an offer and he replied he had to have more then that because they had more then that in it. I explained about the 2 draw backs and he said yes, they were aware of that and had already adjusted the asking price because of that issue (he was correct, they had already adjusted the price and were well within range) but hey i'm trying to get the best possible deal i can ... right? So I asked him what he had to have and he replied. I replied to much, i explained some things that would need to be repaired and he then said, well if your willing to do the repairs this is what i will take. I then made another offer and told him that I had cash in hand and this was all i would pay for the unit (of course my bottom dollar amount was actually much higher), that we could make the deal today. He told me to hang on and came back and said that they would take it. I went outside and told my husband what i got the unit for and he said, your kidding me. I said nope, 4500.00 less then asking price and 5800.00 under Nada book used value price. I also told him that we were getting a new engine battery (remember how it wouldn't start when we first tried it) a full tank of propane and a half full gas tank. I settled for the half full gas and hey with all these extra's I just added to the price of savings.

We went inside and did the paper work, then we went into their shop and did our walk through. The dealer gives everyone a walk through and esp since we are first time owners of a self contained unit. We didn't tell them we had been researching and i have tried to learn everything i possible could by reading and talking to those who were expeierenced. A very nice man name Larry showed us everything we needed to know about the unit. Where everything was and how it worked. Wow so much information in such a short amount of time. He even gave us some personal tips he says he has learned himself from personally owning a self contained unit. I would recommend this dealer to anyone interested in buying a motor home.

Happy with our new purchase and our new home to be we drove off the lot and to the next town and finished filling up the gas tank. We drove back to our tempary homebase. Tomorrow is the task of cleaning and transfering all of our belongings. The task i dread!

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