Buying a static caravan

JodyBPM

We're thinking about buying a static caravan as a holiday home. It's an oldish van, so there's a few K upfront cost to buy it, plus an ongoing c2K each year in ground rent and other associated costs.

We're in a fairly healthy financial situation, but buying this van would have an impact.

We were planning on paying off the mortgage on the house in full in Feb and the savings are on plan to do that. However, if we also buy this van, then we will literally be leaving ourselves with no savings at all in the bank once we've paid it off, which really worries me. Having said that, we will be able to (and more importantly we are quite disciplined and actually will) be able to save around about £850 a month even after taking into account the annual caravan costs once the mortgage is paid off.

We could leave ourselves a small balance of £5k in savings, and keep £5k on the mortgage for a few more months to give ourselves a safety net, I guess.

I'm really twitchy and anxious about committing to taking on the van, though. I know dh would like to, and I know that the children would love it. It's close enough that we would get loads of weekend use out of it as well as summer holidays/half terms/bank hols etc. We also love caravaning and have well researched it and know all the risks, potential costs etc. We're only in our 30s, so honestly, deep down, I know that being mortgage free with a good chunk being saved each month is a really comfortable and secure financial situation to be in.

I'm worried that I will end up making the rest of the family suffer because I'm so unable to take any financial risks! But I'm so used to having a good buffer in savings, and the idea of having an empty savings account, albeit for a short time is worrying me. But the kind of van and pitch that have come up (oldish van with no time limit on site, quiet facility free site with lower ground rent than holiday parks, in our preferred location etc) very, very rarely come up, so we can't just leave it a year or two, as it might take years to find just what we want again, and I do think our children are just at the right age to do it now.

I need someone, objectively, to tell me that I'm worrying about nothing! The worst case scenario would be that at some point in the future we give up the van and have effectively wasted the purchase price of the caravan, but in the scheme of things, its "only" £4K which isn't a huge deal.

Can someone give me a bit of perpsective please!

WestonDave

If you will have £850 spare once the mortgage is gone, then in theory that means that you will only be about 6 months from clearing it. So if this is a do it now or not at all thing, and you can't wait the 6 months to clear the mortgage, then do it and pay 6 months more mortgage. The traditional logic is to clear the mortgage but 6 months interest on £5k is around £150 absolute tops. The only other thing to do is maybe a quick "audit" of what else you might need spare cash for in a hurry (e.g. boiler, car, kitchen appliances etc) so that you can reassure yourself that £5k is enough.

It always pay to look at the long term picture - again normally this means being prudent and saving before spending, but in this case clearing the mortgage might be a "short term" position if it prevents you acheiving a long term goal (because the pitch/van has gone)

euronorris

Why don't you write down a list of all the 'cons' you can think of, and how you would deal with them if they arose. That should give you a clearer picture of whether it's really as big a risk as you think.

For example, if you went ahead, and then the boiler bust (right before winter too), how would you resolve the situation? Or, if one or both of you were made redundant. What then?

Seanymph

Static caravans can be quite a financial fall........ you are obligated to the site and have to pay whatever charges they ask - you have no options of other places to visit - you take a large loss if you sell them (and sometimes can only sell them back to the site owners).
How about a towable caravan? Or a camper van? Once you get your extra money a month.

zaksmum

We're just about to get rid of our static caravan. The way our last few summers have been, we hardly managed to use the van anything like as much as we would have liked to.

Not a lot of fun cowering in a van watching the rain stream down steamed up windows! It was costing us £30 in fuel to get there plus 2.5K a year in site fees, so if you only manage say 10 weekends a year you're paying £280 per weekend!

Desperado99

JodyBPM wrote: »

We're thinking about buying a static caravan as a holiday home. It's an oldish van, so there's a few K upfront cost to buy it, plus an ongoing c2K each year in ground rent and other associated costs.

We're in a fairly healthy financial situation, but buying this van would have an impact.

We were planning on paying off the mortgage on the house in full in Feb and the savings are on plan to do that. However, if we also buy this van, then we will literally be leaving ourselves with no savings at all in the bank once we've paid it off, which really worries me. Having said that, we will be able to (and more importantly we are quite disciplined and actually will) be able to save around about £850 a month even after taking into account the annual caravan costs once the mortgage is paid off.

We could leave ourselves a small balance of £5k in savings, and keep £5k on the mortgage for a few more months to give ourselves a safety net, I guess.

I'm really twitchy and anxious about committing to taking on the van, though. I know dh would like to, and I know that the children would love it. It's close enough that we would get loads of weekend use out of it as well as summer holidays/half terms/bank hols etc. We also love caravaning and have well researched it and know all the risks, potential costs etc. We're only in our 30s, so honestly, deep down, I know that being mortgage free with a good chunk being saved each month is a really comfortable and secure financial situation to be in.

I'm worried that I will end up making the rest of the family suffer because I'm so unable to take any financial risks! But I'm so used to having a good buffer in savings, and the idea of having an empty savings account, albeit for a short time is worrying me. But the kind of van and pitch that have come up (oldish van with no time limit on site, quiet facility free site with lower ground rent than holiday parks, in our preferred location etc) very, very rarely come up, so we can't just leave it a year or two, as it might take years to find just what we want again, and I do think our children are just at the right age to do it now.

I need someone, objectively, to tell me that I'm worrying about nothing! The worst case scenario would be that at some point in the future we give up the van and have effectively wasted the purchase price of the caravan, but in the scheme of things, its "only" £4K which isn't a huge deal.

Can someone give me a bit of perpsective please!

That's the thing though, it won't just be £4k, it'll be that plus the £2k per year in ongoing fees...

£2k gets you a pretty nice annual family holiday.

My dad has a static, but it works out for him because he lives in it for most of the year. Having said that, his site has changed hands 3 times in the 6 years he's had it and the rent has gone up each time.

sunshinetours

Its the ongoing fees and inevitable maintenance on an older van that is the real cost rather than the £4k purchase cost. You will most likely get at least some of that back if you ahd to/decided to sell

As others have said £2k+ in site fees plus presumably gas, insurance? it buys quite a few nice weekends away

Why not consider a newer touring caravan and you could always find a seasonal pitch somwhere nice or actually tour. You don't have to go far to get away from it all. We have been 10 miles from home for weekends before - seems like miles away!

Maybe pay off your mortgage and then look at a new or nearly new tourer (say 5/6 berth)

Saying all that if you think it will give you some quality time with family whilst they are young enough to want to go then go for it. you are in a great financial position so why not enjoy it?

Errata

What's the site policy on the age of statics? How many years would you be able to use it before you were instructed to move it off the site? At that point, what happens if no other site will allow it? How much can you afford pw for heat, light, insurance?

onlyroz

My parents owned a static van in the Lakes for around 8 years. They loved it (and so did we) but there are a few things to consider:

- Ground rent will go up over the years
- You'll also have to pay electricity, water, gas etc
- There might be unexpected maintenance costs, particularly if the van is in a stormy location. There might also be things like burst water pipes in the winter etc etc
- Most sites aren't open all year round so check out when you'll be able to visit
- Some sites don't want really old vans knocking around - my parents were told that once the van got to be 10 years old they'd either have to replace it or move it somewhere else
- You might be able to "sub-let" the van when you're not there, to generate some extra cash - either arranging this yourself or perhaps letting the site owner do it for you

sunshinetours

OP has covered the issue of older van and it not being a regular holiday style park in first post

JodyBPM

LOL, I posted on here hoping that everyone would reassure me, but you're mostly feeding my fears!

To answer just a few of the points raised (trust me, I've done a LOT of research and probably have already considered most of the issues!)

The age of the van is not a problem on this particular site. The ground rent is cheap, and £2k pa will cover ground rent, insurance and utilities plus a small surplus for maintenance. I appreciate that ground rent may (will) go up, but ultimately if it goes up more than we would be prepared to pay, then our loss will be the cost of the van (£4k) minus anything we get for selling it, minus the non financial "value" of the time we have spent there up to that point. Now up to £4k is quite a lot of money, but in the scheme of things in life, its probably not really that much (or so I keep trying to convince myself).

We're happy with the pitch, the local area and the opening times in the season.

We're reasonably high earners, have a 3 bed house in a nice area already, which is a perfectly suitable size for our family, and at most will owe £5K on the mortgage, so small raises of costs aren't going to be an issue.

In the case of redundancy, we'd give up the van! In all honesty we have plenty of slack in our normal household budget where we could tighten our belts. If I was made redundant, we would be able to survive quite comfortably on DH's salary alone, if DH was to be made redundant I would probably have to work full time rather than my current 2 days a week, but cutting back, either one of our full time earnings would be sufficient to pay living costs with no mortgage or rent payments.

I think I'm struggling, because a) I don't like having no savings (even though that would be a very short term situation) and b) deep down I know that owning a static is not a financially sensible thing to do. But there will be a lot of non financial value in us owning a van. I think I'm struggling as I can't quantify that in financial terms.

I don't want make the family miss out because of my irrational fears. Left to my own devices, I'd probably be one of those mad old women who refuse to put the central heating on and freeze all winter despite having £100K+ in the bank!