I can understand your hesitation to spend $30,000 on something you don't know if you will like or not. Though in the end that $30,000 coach, or one like it may be the best deal, also remember asking and selling price are not the same thing, in the case of my current coach, which was bought from a private seller, the asking price was $25,000, it had been advertised for only 2 days when I saw the ad, after gathering information, spending an hour on the phone talking to the owner (it was 1,100 miles away), I sent him an email with an offer of $19,000. In the email I showed ads for 2 very similar coaches, same brand, same floor plan, just a couple of years older priced at $15,500 and $18,000, explaining that I liked his better, appreciated the updates even if they were not exactly what I would have done, explained the added retrieval cost I would incur considering his coach was 1,100 miles away and the other 2 were 250-300 miles away. In the end we settled on $20,500 and I flew down to pick it up 5 days later, part of the reason I was willing to pay more was that he had put over $10,000 in parts alone into the coach in the proceeding 2 years including new tires, batteries, refrigerator, carpet, seating, tv, .... including $2,823.32 worth of professional suspension upgrade work in March of 2015 (I happen to have the receipt sitting here).
The question then becomes one of how much work are you going to find that these $15,000 coaches that you are looking at will need, and how much will they be worth after you spend another $10,000-$15,000+ on fixing them.
I should probably also note that in the 2 years I have owned my current coach, I have spent close to another $10,000 in provisioning (pots, pans, bbq grill, sheets, towels...), maintenance (fluid changes, new propane regulator, new shocks...) and upgrades (GPS, TPMS, LED lights, ..), most of it DIY, though about $3,000 has been paid out to professional shops ($750 to fix the dash air conditioner, another $600 or so to replaced a hydraulic hardline for the automatic parking brake a couple of months ago after one blew leaving me stranded on the side of the road, ...)
In addition to that my coach is currently sitting at a nearby trusted shop I have been using for over 20 years, with parts on order, it is needing new upper and lower ball joints on both sides, estimate $1,100. Now some of those things were not technically necessary, the old shocks still had some life in them, but it does drive much better with the new ones, I could have lived with the 8 year old GPS that was bought for my wife's previous car which did not have integrated nav, but the Garmin 770 is oh so much nicer to have on the road with its brighter bigger screen, ... Much the same can be said about the $200 Dometic 320 toilet with residential size bowl vs the leaking (would no longer hold water for more than an hour) 15 year old smaller / lower Thetford Aurora toilet.
Know I know I will never recover these costs if and when I sell this coach, but having done them allows me to enjoy it more, though looking back I have to ask if I should have bought one where much of this had already been done, at a price of $28,500 - $32,000 would I be ahead, particularly after counting the many hours of labor I have put into the coach.
Ike
p.s. NADA says my coach is worth $15,105, though in 5 months worth of shopping nation wide I never found one in good to great shape with that low of asking price.
"You seem to be jumping in with a lot of enthusiasm, but you need to slow down and be a little more careful. You can live now with no thoughts of later, but I guarantee you that "later" will catch up with you and possibly cost you a lot of money."
