Making Money With Your RV: A Renter’s Guide

In today’s economy, a motorhome is more than just a living space  — it is a financial asset as well. You can rent out a camper to lighten the financial burden of the vehicle’s maintenance, storage, and transport. In addition, you could also make enough to offset other expenditures in your life, like paying for weekend getaways or even educational expenses for your children. 

So why do the majority of motorhome owners have low returns on their usage? It is because the average owner tends to avoid using their motorhome for more than a month per year. This means that the owner cannot get significant returns off their vehicle in the key years in when their vehicle is still relatively valuable, and owners should aim to at least use their motorhomes to do something productive rather than letting it depreciate in storage.

With this in mind, we have decided to compile a few suggestions to help those who are looking to make money off their motorhome.

What Can You Do With A Motorhome?

The amount of money you can make off renting your motorhome is determined by a number of factors —  including the model and age of your motorhome, as well as how often renters use your facility. However, this depends on a few factors.

Firstly, what is the profit you can make off rentals? Based on a report calculating the average rental price of motorhome rentals, we’ve calculated that rental over a five-month period can earn you between 13 thousand and 43 thousand dollars a year. Different classes and models of motorhomes can provide different degrees of profit, because the more luxurious your motorhome is, the higher the nightly cost. 

Regardless, it is clear that if you can sustain a high number of rentals per year, your profits could easily reach the range of 50,000 dollars annually. Hence, many owners have decided to expand their business beyond a single motorhome — they rent out multiple models which can bring in an even higher profit. Some of these rentals can create profits in the range of 150 thousand dollars a year!

Why Should You Rent Out Your Homes

There are many reasons to get into this business. Renting motorhomes allows one to own motorhomes with reduced costs, not to mention, it can create a community of people who are interested in motorhomes just like you. Where newcomers are interested in the motorhome lifestyle, one can introduce them to the basics of how to operate and use a motorhome. These are experiences and connections that can be useful to you too!

Next, your motorhome will be better used and will not have to suffer slow depreciation while in storage. RVs usually come with high costs when parked in holding facilities, and if you allow renters to use them frequently, they can help you maintain your motorhome’s internals. At the very least, they will alert you to the loss or dysfunction of any core systems you might be worried about.

Are There Drawbacks?

However, this is not to say that renting a motorhome is a walk in the park. 

For one thing, active usage increases the attrition rate of your vehicle’s core systems. Not only do owners need to concern themselves with who is using their motorhome and whether they are trustworthy, but they must also take time and effort to clear the motorhome of clutter and ensure its core systems are still working well.

This makes communication skills all the more important for renters, as you will need to communicate clearly with your clients and negotiate good prices for damages caused. In fact, you might even end up paying for damages out of your own pocket.

Tips and Tricks for Renters

If you’ve read this far, you’ve already learned that your earnings come with some cost. In fact, owners should take care to make sure their rentees are as reliable as possible. This means that renting cannot be done via casual, anonymous websites, and certainly should not be done without meeting your clients first.

We recommend that you find a peer-to-peer platform where rentees are verified and covered under insurance – you will still be able to find thousands of renters there, and these will be reliable.

You should find a large and established platform where you can easily rent out your motorhome and earn money at the same time — it’s a huge plus if it is available on a variety of devices, especially mobile applications. A good peer-to-peer platform would have a smooth UI and comprehensive policies available to make sure you are safely protected against potential threats.

Some green flags when looking for a peer-to-peer rental site is if it provides verification by doing background checks on renters, and offers services like booking, payment, and regulatory processing within the platform.

Marketing your motorhome must also be done wisely and with care for the type of customer you want to attract. You should invest in good photography that fully exploits all the features your RV has, as well as catchy and detailed titles and descriptions that can highlight your unique selling points.

Next, you should think about what you can offer renters. Transport to various places can help make the deal more attractive and can help you determine your pricing considering fuel prices as well.

Mileage and setup should also be considered in your final charging price. All the dirty work of making sure your motorhome is connected to running water and a source of power could be a potential moneymaker, as well as extra services — like cleaning and going above mileage limits. These should all be considered to help boost your rental business’s profit margins, and they can also be services that will benefit renters too.  

Finally, consider the timing of your rentals and plan accordingly. Renters who hire your motorhome for prolonged periods could be offered discounts so that they will return as regular customers; while holidays and festive events allow you to charge higher prices. Finally, the small details of hospitality could keep customers coming back for years or even decades.

Conclusion

We hope you’ve enjoyed our article on RV rentals, and we hope you’ll have a better understanding of how to tackle these problems.