caravan purchase

[triple h]

Am looking to buy my first caravan and have seen one in my price range on a great site in Cumbria.However,the site owners will only allow the van to stay for a furher 7 years on site as they have a maximum limit of 15 years per caravan from new,and this one has been on site for 8 years already.As I think I am paying the market rate for the caravan,is this still a bad deal,as I dont think I will be able to afford a new van in 7 years,which is what I would have to do to stay on this site.

[Andyvon]

Don't bother triple h. Caravan ownership is bad news and it'll cost you a bomb.

I owned a 36' 3-bed caravan at Billing Aquadrome a few years ago. It semed like a good idea at the time - a home from home, weekends away, family coming to stay etc. It was one of the worst mistakes of my life!

The site owners were very pleasant while I was thinking about the purchase- all smiles and "Sir" etc. Does that sound familiar? Well, they changed in a flash as soon as I'd handed over my �9,000. They suddenly turned sharp and snappy and the smiles and "Sir" disappeared once they'd banked my cheque.

Three weeks after buying the caravan reality dawned. Every time I opened the door I was met with a smell of mildew which is unavoidable in a caravan in the UK climate and the rain hammered on the roof like gravel. The water is never hot due to the limitations of a caravan heating system (you can't have a hot water tank).

Then I received a letter from the owners telling me they had just put up the annual ground rent from �890 to �1300! The letter said in a very tart manner that I couldn't pay in installments and I had one week to pay in full or they would start legal action to have the caravan removed! If that happened then I would have to pay the legal costs, the cost of a low-loader and then the daily storage cost of the caravan! I then found this is common and site owners can charge whatever they wish. To cut a long story short, after 5 months I sold the caravan back to Billing for �3000!

Don't buy a caravan triple h as they'll have you by the provererbial short and curlies. Most owners will tell you the same sorry tale about ground rent hikes, gas bottle rent, misery and the financial millstone.
If you want to stay in caravans triple h then rent one. There are tens of thousands for rent on the web. What does that tell you? Most are unbooked and you can pick and choose.

And