Sharing a camper

Repolho

Hi guys,

I've been lurking around here for quite a while now but only took the time to register now.

Anyhow, my question is this. Do any of you guys have any experience with sharing / joint ownership of a camper?

I have wanted one for a while now, but have only recently began looking. My dad has also decided that he would like to buy one. My budget is pretty small (max €15k) so we were thinking that if we pooled our resources that we could buy a much better camper and come to some sort of sharing arrangement!

Any advice or suggestions or indeed any other information is greatly appreciated!

loobylou

Go for it,it makes perfect sense. I had planned to do same with my brother-in-law but he never had the money at the right time. Obviously you would need to trust your "partner" 100% so with family is probably best. You will also have to register it in just one name, best to whoever will keep it on their property. Insurance wise an extra named driver costs, from memory, about €35.
Single ownership of a camper generally means it's parked up idle a lot of the time.

Repolho

Thanks for the support Loobylou. Think your right, it definitely makes more sense than 2 of us buying campers and both being sitting up half the time:eek:

Anyone any experience of shared ownership, how did you actually work out the sharing? Every second week / month or something?

My dad has a shed to house it in, so I reckon he can have it from October to March and I'll take it from April to September. 6 months eack, sounds fair to me

3ps

I do this with my father. We have a very informal arrangement. You could come up with formal list of dates on which you do / don't have access and make it all complicated.

Essentially I look after the camper and if any money has to be spent then I ask him for half.

The reality is that for the 2-3 months of good weather in the year there is onyl 2-3 weeks each of you can take for a summer holiday... so in Dec/Jan of each year both you plan your holidays and you work out who has it when for the summer.

For the rest of the year you are likely to just want to use it on bank holidays or weekends so you can just divvy them out or leave it as a free for all.

You might want to come up with a specific statement that if somebody crashes it then they pay for it rather than splitting the cost.

Repolho

3ps wrote: »

I do this with my father. We have a very informal arrangement.

THanks for the info 3ps. Is this arrangement working out well for you?

Also, can I just ask, do you and your father live close to one another? I live about 100 hundred miles away from my parents place; just another complication to be overcome I guess!

3ps

Yes it works well. The first year I went to France for 3 weeks.... got home and 2 weeks later he went for 3 weeks.

TBH he hasn't used it much lately but my brother is 27 now so can be insured and he will probably give his share over to him to use.

We live about 30 mins drive from each other, my brother lives about 40mins. I suspect he will use it a bit more.

If you live 100 miles then I would do the following:

In Dec/Jan decide when you are both going to take your big summer hols and leave a week or 2 between them in case you need to sort something out after the first trip (repairs etc).

Then divvy up all the bank holiday weekends and other times you will have off. You are not planngin where youare going, just that it is for the use of one family or other at that time. If the person who has the use of it cannot use it for whatever reason they can just let the other person take it. No point in keeping score though.... anyway if you get on with them (and you probably do if you are considering sharing) then you won't fall out over it.

Then I would keep it informal for the rest of the year, just give as much heads up as you can and not get stressed if you miss a sunny weekend!