Static Caravan/Lodges

Martynt74

Martynt74

Martynt74

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Joined
20 Feb 2004
Posts
22,877
Location
Hondon de las Nieves, Spain
Anyone on here got one?

My in laws had a huge 3 bedroom 40' x 20' chalet in Porthmadog around 10 years ago and it was great until my father in law passed away and they sold it. It was pretty expensive though at around £150k plus 4k/yr site fees.

We've recently been chatting about how it'd be quite nice having something similar in North Wales or the Lake District where we could get away for long weekends with the dogs and from what i've seen you can get a reasonable 2 bedroom one for around the £30-£40k mark on a decent smallish looking site with fees around £1500/yr.

Anyone here have one? Would you recommend it? Do you go often enough and still enjoy it? Do you feel it encourages you to get away more often or does it feel like a chain around your ankle where you feel compelled to go because you're paying for it and don't get to explore elsewhere enough.

Any input would be great.

EDIT - Talking about something like this

https://treetopscaravanpark.co.uk/sales/willerby-rio-gold-caravan-north-wales/
 
I can't offer any proper advice. But i believe plenty of people buy them, then rent them out all year round to cover the payments. Then of course if you want to one weekend, you just don't rent it out.

See it all the time all over facebook.
 
Beware that a lot of sites have in their contracts that any replacement caravan or chalet has to be sourced from themselves, often at elevated prices, a d sometimes every X years. I was also told, although I am incredulous, sometimes the old one must be sold to the site owners at what THEY see as a fair price... The site owners round here that I see all seem to do very nicely from them.
 
Must say I've often thought about these as a proper downsize and get the hell out of dodge plan. I just worry about them not being built so well and the grief of maintaining one.

It could be a great way of getting a detached property on the cheap though. I do know a few couples who have sold up and downsized to this sort of thing and they love it. I suppose one worry is what the fellow residents are like on the sites!
 
I'm a long way away from knowledgeable about these things, but one thing I have read which you might want to look into:

The camps where these statics are housed often have rules about how old a caravan can be on their site. In effect, this means that when the caravan reaches that age, it's value drops to almost nothing - because most other sought after sites have the same rule, so the potential buyers (who would also need to be able to transport it) are very limited.

So I believe that they will, in the mid to long term, lose a huge percentage of their value.

Another important factor is that there's often some sort of rule about only being able to use them for 11 months of the year to stop someone just living at the site. Sites differ on whether they choose the month to have a shut down, or allow individuals to decide when they won't be there. (And in the latter case, I suspect they don't really check up on it.)


This is all third hand information, so please do look into it and don't take my word for it at all!
 
My mother in law moved into one. She loved it while she was there. However there's a massive catch.

If you move out - you loose virtually all your money.
 
MadMan-JaMeS said:
I can't offer any proper advice. But i believe plenty of people buy them, then rent them out all year round to cover the payments. Then of course if you want to one weekend, you just don't rent it out.

See it all the time all over facebook.
Click to expand...

I bet they very rarely get to stay there. My in-laws have a house in Camber Sands. When they bought it they were encouraging us to go take holidays there. Now, they've got tenants signing annual leases! The same weekends you'd want to go would be the same weekends that would cover your bills.

Not saying it's impossible that it could work, of course.
 
bazzabear said:
I'm a long way away from knowledgeable about these things, but one thing I have read which you might want to look into:

The camps where these statics are housed often have rules about how old a caravan can be on their site. In effect, this means that when the caravan reaches that age, it's value drops to almost nothing - because most other sought after sites have the same rule, so the potential buyers (who would also need to be able to transport it) are very limited.

So I believe that they will, in the mid to long term, lose a huge percentage of their value.

Another important factor is that there's often some sort of rule about only being able to use them for 11 months of the year to stop someone just living at the site. Sites differ on whether they choose the month to have a shut down, or allow individuals to decide when they won't be there. (And in the latter case, I suspect they don't really check up on it.)


This is all third hand information, so please do look into it and don't take my word for it at all!
Click to expand...

Yes, was similar for my in laws lodge, they didn't allow anything older than 10 (maybe 20) years old. There was then a neighboring site which allowed anything and it felt a lot more run down.

My theory is to treat it as i would a car and just think about it as an annual cost. Say buy it for £40k and if i get 20 years out of it, then it's say £3.5k per year as a cost (including site fees). If you could rent it out for say 3-4 weeks of the year in high season then i'd estimate you could recoup around 2k of that at around £500 a week. Maybe less as time goes on and it's an older model.

That'd then make it around £1500pa for ownership which seems fairly decent providing you get there often enough. If you class it as a B&B at £80/night then it's around 20 nights a year to make it worthwhile (obviously there are other costs such as electric/gas etc and also other benefits over a B&B such as being able to cook and leave things there and have a lot more space)
 
dirtychinchilla said:
I bet they very rarely get to stay there. My in-laws have a house in Camber Sands. When they bought it they were encouraging us to go take holidays there. Now, they've got tenants signing annual leases! The same weekends you'd want to go would be the same weekends that would cover your bills.

Not saying it's impossible that it could work, of course.
Click to expand...

I think we're less bothered about that. We'd still want a holiday abroad in the summer months, so would happily rent it out for 2-3 weeks during July/August. It's mainly the long weekends spent at the beach which appeal to us. Especially me as i enjoy paddleboarding and the dogs love walks on the beach. I'd also get some great running done in the hills.

In fact the more i think about it, my wife might never see me :D
 
It all comes down to if you can use it enough. Some of my in-laws have one in Devon (I'm based in Birmingham) - so it's about 2-3 hours drive.

They don't rent it out and spend the majority of their weekends down there. For them, it's ideal and the fee's don't seem to bother them. I believe there is a rule about upgrading the static every X years, but as long as you use it :)
 
bazzabear said:
The camps where these statics are housed often have rules about how old a caravan can be on their site. In effect, this means that when the caravan reaches that age, it's value drops to almost nothing - because most other sought after sites have the same rule, so the potential buyers (who would also need to be able to transport it) are very limited.

So I believe that they will, in the mid to long term, lose a huge percentage of their value.
Click to expand...

Just to add, The house that I have just moved to has a static as an outbuilding (Very useful it is too)

Just because they are called caravans doesn't mean that they can be easily moved. Mine is still usable as a building but any attempt to move it would result in it falling to bits.

I cant state this definitively, but I suspect that any static caravan much more than 10 years old would probably have to be broken up on site and removed as scrap.

IE these are not in the main items that can either be bought or sold second hand unless you are very lucky.
 
Before moving down here we had a seasonal pitch i and just left our normal Caravan on site ,was £500 a season plus storage over winter £100 but we could leave it on the pitch and just turn up .it was in the overflow field and out of main season we had it to ourselves ,quite afew others did the same but their vans were a little more upmarket than ours but it was an awesome thing that led to us moving here
 
Need to read all the small print
As mentioned site owners usually have you over a barrel if it comes to selling
Around here ~kent~site fees are
About 5k a year
Need to know if you are allowed to rent it out if you want to
Again around here not allowed on a lot of them as it's aimed at full time live in tenants
Which means to avoid council taxes they have to vacate for X amount of weeks a year
Electricity and gas you may be forced to only buy from the site owners
There's quite a lot to look into regarding them
And the can't be over a certain age know some people who were removed from site as theirs was deemed too old at sole
Discretion of the owners
Ended up owing the owner a grand to have it towed to the gate of the property
As only site owner was allowed to tow it
Also stuff like decking or patio or parking space /drive etc
Only allowed to be fitted by site owners at
Inflated costs
 
Narj said:
Must say I've often thought about these as a proper downsize and get the hell out of dodge plan. I just worry about them not being built so well and the grief of maintaining one.

It could be a great way of getting a detached property on the cheap though. I do know a few couples who have sold up and downsized to this sort of thing and they love it. I suppose one worry is what the fellow residents are like on the sites!
Click to expand...
That’s my mums plan when she retires. Gonna sell her house, buy a real top drawer one on the coast in the West Country and have bundles of cash left over.
 
robfosters said:
That’s my mums plan when she retires. Gonna sell her house, buy a real top drawer one on the coast in the West Country and have bundles of cash left over.
Click to expand...
From our families personal experience I would revise this plan. It would be a much better investment selling the house and buying a small cottage / apartment.
 
They are great, a friend of the family had one for decades.

Saying that they are expensive with the need to pay site fees (always in the thousands), replace your caravan every 10 or so years, be tied to buying/selling to the site owner etc

For me a small cottage/house would be much more viable but I guess that depends heavily on the cost of bricks and mortar where you want to be.
 
There's always the option of buying a plot of land and trying to live (mostly) off grid, which really appeals to me. I am becoming cantankerous and antisocial enough to give it a go, I reckon. :)
 
Mcnumpty2323 said:
Need to read all the small print
As mentioned site owners usually have you over a barrel if it comes to selling
Around here ~kent~site fees are
About 5k a year
Need to know if you are allowed to rent it out if you want to
Again around here not allowed on a lot of them as it's aimed at full time live in tenants
Which means to avoid council taxes they have to vacate for X amount of weeks a year
Electricity and gas you may be forced to only buy from the site owners
There's quite a lot to look into regarding them
And the can't be over a certain age know some people who were removed from site as theirs was deemed too old at sole
Discretion of the owners
Ended up owing the owner a grand to have it towed to the gate of the property
As only site owner was allowed to tow it
Also stuff like decking or patio or parking space /drive etc
Only allowed to be fitted by site owners at
Inflated costs
Click to expand...

Yeah definitely want to research that stuff - I don't know much about it but someone I used to do IT support for died while living in one and her relatives had to take the site owner to court over some stuff like that and my sister in law's parents have a similar story.
 
I don't own one but I've always had access to them growing up through grandparents and other family having them. They're a massive asset to big families, loads of us have had great times in them, so I'd always be open to getting one later in life for that reason alone.
 
My paternal grandfather owned a plot for over 30 years with various caravans on it at a site near Congleton in Cheshire. He sold up when the site owners started bringing in money-making rules like some of those mentioned above like caravan Age limits etc.

In the time he was there (one of the first plot owners) the site went from a 30-ish berth site on the "ground" level with a single toilet/shower block to a triple level 130+ site with sports fields etc by the time he left in 2000-ish, so the site owners were definitely making money!
 
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