Campervan vs Boat vs Touring Caravan vs caravan vs 2nd home !

smallzoo2

Hi

Not sure whether this is the correct forum but mulling over the idea of a used 'holiday home' as we are semi-retired. Just two of us and two dogs ( although be nice to bring any grandchildren )

We've done the basic 'googling..'

Caravans/Lodges
  Cheapish ..less than £30k 
  Site fees can vary a lot £5k
  Sometime less than 10 years of life
  A lot of people say the park owners can be dreadful
  Cant be moved..

Touring Caravan
  Cheapish ..less than £30k 
  Can be moved 
  Do still have site fees
  Not very big 
  Dont know about resale

Boat
  Various prices ..but for us less than say £50k
  Have to like living on water !
  Need maintenance
  Mooring fees
  Dont know about resale

Campervan
  Cheapish ..less than £20k 
  Can be moved 
  Would need to find campsite or B&B's etc
  Would just use to travel and stop at places
 
2nd Home
  Various prices ..but for us less probably £150k
  Need maintenance
  Cant be moved..
  Expensive to run etc..



Any suggestions, comments, laughs, criticism etc etc  

LillythePink

Depends on what you want to do or where you want to go.

Static - one place for all your holidays - in the UK or France (for instance).  Do you want a lot of facilities at the site?  Parents had a static in france, lovely site in a lovely town and they made some nice friends there.  Resale of them can be hit and miss, but they have sold up now as can't get across due to ill health

Touring - are you confident to drive pulling it?  Where would you store it when not in use?

RV - nice to tour with it - depending on the size, you either need to be at sites where there are good public transport links quite close in order to get out and about otherwise you need to unhitch/pack up leads etc every time you want to go out and parking at places out and about can be challenging depending on where you are.  If you have the campervan why would you stay at a B&B?   We have hired them in the US to travel and it was nice, but we did on occasion, hire a car to get around and see places

Boats - are you near the coast?  Would you want to travel far?  Would you do any boating certificates if you are going places for navigation etc?  Depending on the weather, you may not get to use it as much

Second home - again, really the place you would go on holiday to make use of it - but you could leave items there so you really don't need to take anything with you - yes, additional costs re insurance/utilities etc but would that be in the UK or foreign?

We are completing on a second home in Spain - this will be our retirement goal, so yes, we will be paying utilities etc up to that time, but will be going there for holidays - we have travelled around so are happy to have our holidays only there

Grumpy_chap

smallzoo2 said:

Caravans/Lodges
  
Touring Caravan
  
Boat
  
Campervan
   
2nd Home
  

These options are very different in what they allow (flexibility of holiday location), costs to acquire and maintain, and also guaranteed depreciation versus possible appreciation (which would then be subject to CGT).

The question is almost too broad.

gwynlas

'If you want to explore UK and Europe then the campervan will give you more options

Some people like statics but you are tied to one place and rules of site ownership.

Tourer more work each time and need designated sites.

Boat of any description only really practical in decent weather not much flexibility

2nd home if it is a place you love offers best value in terms of breaks potential income to offset costs and could offer appreciation

daveyjp

The benefit of static/second home is opportunity to use it all year round.

Tucosalamanca

Campervan or motorhome?

You appear to be looking at and comparing very different things.

A £30k caravan will be of comparable quality and age to a £70k plus motorhome.

Whereas a £20k motorhome will be comparable age and quality to a £5k caravan (if not even less).

A campervan is a glorified car.

You say 'basic Googling'.  There's no consistency in what you've posted, it's all just a stab in the dark (some of the figures are not typical, possibly wildly out imo).

You can do on a shoestring budget (other than initial outlay, which doesn't have to be spent on a massively depreciating asset), or you can commit to something that will cost more than the average UK wage each year.

As an example, you could spend £30k on low mileage, preloved motorhome, costs and depreciation would be minimal. There are some perceived risks (reliability for example).

The same motorhome new, might be well in excess of £100k. It has some advantages and some disadvantages but ultimately will cost more per year. The difference, £70k could be put to use elsewhere, or even invested help fund the lifestyle.

Similarly, you could buy a property in the UK for £150k, or £80k in France, or £40k in Tenerife.

Only you can decide what works best for you.

I would start with 'what do you want to do', 'how much time do you want/have to spend', 'what is initial budget', 'what are ongoing costs', 'how much are you willing to lose through depreciation'.

QrizB

I grew up on boats but, in general, they're expensive toys for rich folk. Boating has been described as "sitting in a reinforced hole in the ocean with someone throwing buckets of water at you, while you burn £20 notes".

You could easily spend £50k on a boat, then another £10k a year on berthing and maintenance before you even go anywhere.

If I had a spare million in the bank I'd quite like a boat, but until my lottery numbers come up I'm reduced to looking at the ads on eg. https://www.apolloduck.com

sheramber

Do you want to go the same place all the time or do you want the flexibility to vary where you go?

What budget do you have?

How active / physically fit are you?

Touring caravans require manoeuvring into place. 

Everything has to be packed away before moving off. 

Do you have car of sufficient weight to tow a caravan?

QrizB

smallzoo2 said:

Any suggestions, comments, laughs, criticism etc etc 

You can rent everything on your list. If you've never been caravanning, or campervanning, or boating, or whatever, it's probably worth trying a rental a couple of times.

Depending on how often you expect to use it, it might easily be cheaper to rent on an ad-hoc basis than to buy.

And if you rent, you avoid falling victim to this sort of thing:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2016lxnepno

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w463887l6o

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw5jjzrr89o

smallzoo2

I'm really sorry for being too broad.. so let me clarify..

First , this will be for the UK only. 

Second, our intention ( whether it happens ?? ) is to initially go away for the odd long weekend and then slowly change that to a few weeks away

Third, in tems of budget we could probably get a loan for a campervan or caravan. For the second home we would need to get a second mortgage

Third, we dont mean a motorhome , we mean a campervan and yes it is a glorified car but with a fridge , power etc so we can stop, make some lunch, have a coffee. That option would just be to add some fun on top of renting out cottages which we do at the moment.

Forget the boat.. we went just to have a looked at one today which was £80k and it was far too small and when we looked at the other costs is just not worth it

As for the others,

Static caravan - dont really like the idea of staying in one place and relying on the park owner to decide fees as well as potentially losing a lot of money

Touring caravan - at least with this could move it after a year or so to another site..and no I dont like the idea of moving it but we have met a lot of people of pay for someone to move their caravan which is certainly worth a few hundred once a year.

Second home - the best in terms of investment and if we chose the right location could then use it as another base for exploring another part of the country. Of course much bigger outlay and costs and there does seem to be an awkward but understandable anger at people with second homes

Largs

I'm glad you ruled out static caravan (holiday home) as the only person who gains out of that is Haven and Parkdean - the latter is known as SHARKdean by owners.  I have heard some right horror stories about these and at least when you rent you walk away and as well as handing back the keys, you are handing back PROBLEMS for them to deal with.