Living in an RV vs an apartment or house

I have gone through 4 RVs personally and went cross country with my parents as a teenager in another RV.  I have also worked an RV campground for over 1.5 years now where the majority of the 58 spaces are used by people that live in them.  I have come to find that while the rent of an RV space makes RV living look more affordable, after accounting for all the costs of RV living, it typically is not more affordable.  In fact, you can easily spend much more.

When you have to replace a toilet for $700 instead of the $88-300 of one for a house, or $2000 for a small refrigerator vs. $300-1000 for many large ones for a house, you may start seeing my point.

With a house, you are likely to perform roof maintenance once every 15-20 years, maybe longer depending on the roof.  Most RVs these days have rubber roofs that expand and contract with temperature changes and movement down the road.  This means you have to get up there and re-seal the joints at least once a year.  I've seen too many people not take care of their roof, end up with a leak and end up with a ruined RV that they can't get any money back out of.  What most fail to consider is that it's too late to fix a leak once it happens.  Once the water gets in the roof and walls, it's trapped and will continue to eat away at the wood framing and wood paneling.  Mold will grow and make you sick.  Once all that happens, you may as well throw the whole thing away.

RVs also have batteries and power converters.  These batteries need to be replaced at least once every 5 years.  They're usually lead-acid automotive batteries that don't do well with being drained completely - their life gets much shorter every time you allow this to happen.  Those batteries can easily cost $200-400.  I've seen plenty of power converters die too and they can cost $300.

The walls and insulation in these things are typically much less than a house.  Thus, the cost to keep it heated in the winter is likely more.  I've seen people go through 14 gallons of propane a week.  At the current price, that's $36/week.  The windows are only single-pane and collect tons of moisture, unless you don't breathe.  That moisture becomes a problem if you don't keep after it.

I like this blog about the subject:  http://lifereengineeredblog.com/2013/my-month-living-in-an-rv-a-shockingly-spendy-lifestyle-alternative/

Here's a paragraph from rvnetwork.com that I think sums it up pretty well:

In 1998 we bought a gos powered motorhome that had an MSRP of $81,000 and we actually paid $66K for it. We took delivery in May of 1998 and moved into it fulltime in April of 2000 and we lived in it all of the time until Jan. of 2011. when we shifted to part time, but then took one more trip of 5 months with the same motorhome. In early 2012 we sold that motorhome and the NADA listing for average retail was $13,780 but the marked tor a privately sold coach of 14 years age is not that great and we actually received $10K in return. That means that we basically paid $4K/year for the RV, plus all of our maintenance and other expenses. In looking at our actual expenses we probably paid out very close to $5.5K or just a little bit more per year, including things such as replacement of our couch & refrigerator, upholstery for the chairs, and what chassis repairs that we had. Of course, that was with our RV on the road for about 5K to 7K miles per year on the average.

The only problem with this paragraph is that it is not considering the costs of the RV parks.

Here's some financial analysis of my own:
Cost of a spot at an RV park:     $475
Cost of an RV:  $300   whether you buy a new one or an old one that needs more maintenance, this is likely low.  I've purchased one brand new RV and 3 used ones, and in every case I ended up spending more than this per month.
This is $775/mo. and hasn't considered the extra heating costs, extra costs for commuting due to being further out of town, etc.  Unless you have a desire and the finances to travel the country with an RV like an RV was designed for, an apartment, condo or house may be the way to go.

I've seen too many people come into the RV park and seen them struggle to pay for the costs of their RV when something went bad in it.  I write this hoping to save others the same pain.