NADA is recognized as a guideline by financial institutions and is a guide for wholesale values. Supposedly, NADA members report each sale of each make and model to NADA for inclusion in the pricing estimates. The truth is that it's a self-fulfilling prophesy as NADA now dictates what vehicles are sold for. NADA depreciates vehicles taking into account a fairly constant retail price for new ones and depreciates that value annually.member7777 wrote:For everything or just BF? I know nothing about RVs or NADA but I find your statement incredulous.whemme wrote:member7777,
The accuracy of the values provided by NADA is approximately equal to what you paid NADA for that advice!
However there are some notable exceptions... Jeep Wranglers, for example. And as I said earlier, molded fiberglass trailers, and some brands of motorhomes. Regarding the trailers, for example, I had an 06 Bigfoot 25' rear queen travel trailer. It stickered at $36k and change in '06. I bought it new late in '06 off the showroom floor at Kramer's Kampers in Chicago for $32k. I used it nine years and put a gazillion miles on it. Ok maybe not that many, but i traveled quite a bit with it... probably 30k miles in nine years. Anyway, NADA book on the trailer in excellent condition was $12.5k. I priced mine at $22.5k and it sold in a week word of mouth, without it being advertised. If I'd had to advertise it I'd have put it out there at $25k, and it'd have still sold in a week. New Bigfoot 25RQ trailers are now priced close to $60k which keeps the prices for the used trailers much higher, as $25k for the same product (albeit a few years old) in good condition seems like a bargain.
What happens most often is that the retail price of the new version of the product goes up faster than depreciation catches up with older units. That's what's happening in the case of Born Free. For example, my Born Free 32RQ stickered at $154k in '06. When I bought it last year, the NADA retail value was about $57k. However the prices of the current model of the Born Free most similar to mine, the Imperial 33' on the F550 chassis, now carries a sticker price in the neighborhood of $235k. So while mine should be depreciating, the cost of the new ones are going up so high and so quickly that the prices of the used ones like mine remain constant or even go up over time.
And that, Sir, is how used prices for these commodities can be so seemingly unreasonably high and out of whack with NADA. The fact remains, however, that the total cost of ownership of these units remains low as you realize in resale most of what you spent for the purchase price. Your initial outlay may be more, but you recoup it later because it's in demand and they don't depreciate much, if at all.