It's kinda a long shot, but my parents in-law are thinking about moving from Colo. To somewhere else, that has lower cost of living. They have floated the idea of moving to AZ or OK. They do like to travel, but do not have an RV. Since they are looking to save $$, I thought about them selling their home, and taking some of the proceeds to purchase an RV and full timing in a park in somewhere (like AZ). Just wondering, what would you say is the average monthly rental for a full hookup site in a park with some activities? They probably wouldn't use a pool, but they would participate in cards, dominoes, maybe pickleball, etc. Thanks, Chris g.
That's a good question, but the range of answers is very large. We own a site in Rockport TX which is a very popular snowbird/RV community outside of Corpus Christi. It does have a significantly lower cost of living when compared to the big cities of the northeast or even the larger cities of TX. The cost of a long term RV site at a commercial park in Rockport varies from ~$300/mo to more than twice that (plus electricity) and the range of activities varies from practically none to lots of them. However, in other parts of the country (FL for example) you can find parks where monthly rentals can exceed $1,500/mo. I think the best thing to do would be to figure out what area of the country they like best and then explore the costs in that area. Our criteria for choosing a location included climate as well as cost of living. We decided that if we were going to leave the north we ought to go to a place where we didn't ever have to be cold again!
The Escapees RV Club owned "North Ranch" RV park in Congress, AZ is $325/mo + electric for a full hookup site. One drawback to North Ranch is that the park only has 30 amp service at the sites. That could be a problem in hot weather when more than one A/C might be desirable. The Escapees also has parks in other states with similar rates, including Alabama, Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Texas. The Escapees has also helped members establish eleven member owned and managed co-op parks with relatively modest buy-in costs. There are three co-op parks in Arizona, two in California, and one each in Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. https://www.escapees.com/benefits/rv-parking/
Full timing in an RV isn't really a cost saver, especially after you add in either the cost of a good divorce attorney or a good defense attorney should one of them actually kill the other due to being confined to less than 400 sq feet. Full time RVing usually means sacrificing privacy along with no longer having garages and workshops, flower beds and gardens, fenced yards and the like. Forced intimacy seldom makes the heart grow fonder. While the short term costs may in fact be lower, you have to consider depreciation and repairs when calculating long term costs. RVs wear out quicker than homes and while you likely get value appreciation on stick built homes, there has never been an RV that got more valuable over time (unless it was owned by Elvis). And really the only costs you might be able to save are a percentage of the housing and some property taxes. You still have to pay utilities, insurance, buy food, medical costs etc. Then there are some costs that rise in an RV. People in RVs tend to eat out more often due to the confined spaces of the kitchen and limited appliances in some RVs. There can be little buying in bulk, since storage space is often at a minimum and RV refrigerators don't hold very much. Finally, many full time RV'ers end up getting storage units to keep their personal items they cannot bear to part with. Climate controlled storage can easily run $150+ a month. Don't forget, once they sell for pennies on the dollar of the original purchase price the lawn mower, the weed eater, the furniture and all the household goodies not needed in an RV, should they decide the RV is not for them, they have to buy all the stuff all over again. I would be skeptical if this plan was being advanced by someone who was a long time weekend warrior camper. But is sounds like your in-laws aren't RV'ers to begin with. That, to me, makes the plan a disaster from the get go.
Fulltime RV living is certainly not for everyone, and I agree the OP's in-laws need to do a lot more research before committing to full time RV living, but make no mistake, many of us are doing it quite happily and successfully long term. My wife and I for example, are approaching our 54th wedding anniversary, with most of the last 10 years spent living in one RV or another without needing a divorce or defense lawyer. Many of the things you list as as "sacrificing", we found early on to be refreshing that we didn't have the responsibilities of maintaining them. We do have a small vacation cottage near our kid's homes where we've installed a full hookup site we use when we visit there, but even then we seldom move out of the motorhome unless it's easier to do deep cleaning, remodeling, or maintenance with us out for a couple of days. Our kids actually use the lakeside cottage more than we do, and they do about 90% of the maintenance there. The cottage is only about 200 square feet bigger than the coach any way. As for the "forced intimacy" you mention, if anything, my wife and I are closer now than we were in our working years when much of our spare time was taken up by household chores and maintenance, leaving little time for us to be together. If we felt the need for a little "apart time" for some reason, and the weather isn't good enough to go outside, then there's always the bedroom with its own TV and a door. That rarely happens though, unless one of us isn't feeling well. On fulltiming costs, in our case, we know that our expenses are significantly less than when we had a house with the associated school and property taxes, plus ongoing maintenance and utility costs that were significantly higher than our RV costs. Our taxes and insurance alone were almost $10,000/yr. Our motorhome has no annual taxes, and our insurance is only about $900/yr. And we don't eat out any more now than we did before, typically one dinner and one breakfast out per week. As you said, bulk buying is limited, especially for cold foods, but we haven't found that to be a problem since stores are usually relatively nearby in most places where we travel. All in all though, even if our expenses were the same or a bit more, as long as it still fit within our budget, we'd still be out here enjoying life wherever we want to.
Dutch, I agree that full-timing is great for a number of people. However, I bet most of those people make a conscious decision to full time due to the lifestyle and aren't prodded into it due to perceived financial benefits. You are also traveling, a far cry from full timing in a single location as proposed in the original post. Going from a traditional home to living in an RV, without the benefit of having previous experience with RVs would be a shock to the system of most people and for a great many of those people the shock would be unpleasant.
I absolutely agree with you, but I did think your post over generalized full-timing, prompting my response. In the OP's in-laws situation, perhaps renting a park model for a month or two to get a feel for RV park life before committing to anything longer term. My impression from the OP is that his in-laws might be better suited to a park model than a "real" RV.
"My impression from the OP is that his in-laws might be better suited to a park model than a "real" RV." Hmm, that actually makes sense..
