Bus has not sold

[desi arnaz]

because i have Asperger's syndrome i say it like it is.no woman will like the dark walls.my wife wanted me to paint my lite oak cabinets bright white. i told her to step off the bus in traffic. there was no way i would paint perfectly good oak. but in order to sell it to a married man you may have to lighten it up.

[kyle4501]

Some sad commentaries............it seems everyone wants something for free.........that's a darn nice looking bus......with hours of hard work!  It's extremely well equipped!  If you want junk buy junk, don't bash something because your cheap!

There is a 'wal-mart' mentality out there. . . . . And, sometimes one needs to hear unpleasant things in order to make the best decision.

Sadly, Bill has stated he won't be able to use his coach any more & that is why he wants to sell it. He is having a tough time selling it- even tho it appears to be well above average for a conversion. It is bad enough that he has to sell it. Singing praises & clapping him on the back telling him what a fine coach it is won't help sell it.

I've had to sell some things that were very special to me & the worst part wasn't the lower than expected selling price, but rather all the well intended advice that it was worth more. All that advice did was lead me to price it out of the market & that ended up costing me more in the long run.


The hardest lesson I had to learn is that it has no actual cash value until someone wants to pay you for it.

It is no secret that times are tough & the easy money isn't available any more. Those who still have money have the advantage in that it is a buyer's market now. With the banks selling repoed RVs for less than they are worth, there are lots of values out there to choose from, so the buyers can be very picky.

It is not a matter of what it cost to create, but what someone will pay for it. With so many out there, the competition for a buyer is tough & many sellers have no choice except to drop the price so it will sell by a certain deadline. So, any used RV isn't likely to sell easily for anywhere near it's real value.

Edit to add -
All that to explain why it is so important to advertise it properly - make it as easy as possible for a buyer to fall in love with your fantastic coach & stop looking at others. 

[Dreamscape]

Guys, There is a way to criticize someones work without demeaning the project or person. I agree that everyones taste is different, but it doesn't mean that it's not good. Pointing out faults is as good as the pluses, but done tastefully to get the point across is all I really mean.

The OP has put his work out in front of the world, and I'm sure he is very proud of his accomplishments, I know I would. Anything can be picked apart if you look close enough. I think his pictures and description speak well of him and his coach. I'm also sure he hates to sell it, it's a sad time when that has to happen due to circumstances.

[ccbmster]

Looks like a great job was done on this conversion and I would LOVE to have it.  And, I am in the market for one.  However, as has been said, there are a ton of nice conversions out there that are sitting waiting to be sold and some great deals in the thirty grand range.

It is sad but bank financing on bus conversions is not exactly an easy thing to get.  Those guys like to be able to "look it up in the blue book".

Most bus conversions are made to order and there is a reason for that.

One thing I learned a LONG time ago when I was raising and training horses is that somethings worth is NOT what you have invested but what someone else is willing to give you for it.  In the horse business you have to know when to cut your losses because the longer one is in your barn the more you have invested, making it that much more you lose when you finally give up and sell it.

I know that busses dont eat like horses but the longer they sit, the longer it has been since the conversion was done the less you can expect to get out of it.  Plus there is the money you spend on any insurance you have on it while it is sitting and good old mother nature slowly sucking the value out of it via rust and/or sun fade to the paint etc etc.  Not to mention that busses are made to be used and sitting around is just not good for them mechanically.

In short, "you got to know when to holdem and know when to foldem.  Know when to walk away and know when to run"

[ccbmster]

Decided maybe I should expound a bit on why, at least in my opinion why, conversions are done to order and not on spec.

No matter how nice a job you do on one it is almost inevitable that any prospective buyer is going to wish something was different than you made it, in some way or another.  For example, as lovely as your bus is, my wife and I would just not be happy with all that blue in the carpet and the furniture.  Now that would seem to be a pretty minor thing to most folks, but for us to lay out anywhere near that kind of money and then start ripping up the carpet and throwing out the furniture......well lets just say that that alone would keep us looking for a LOOOOONG time before being tempted to jump on this bus.  And that is just from the limited pics provided.  I am sure if we flew down and looked there would be other things that we would find that we would want to change to one degree or another.

I bought the coach I have now fully converted and went through the changing this and that and addings stuff I wanted that wasnt there.  I enjoyed doing some of that but I got that coach at a price where I didnt mind doing it too.

I have FAR less experience with conversions than most folks on here and have very little talent for doing the work myself.  But, these are my thoughts on the subject as a buyer. For what my thoughts are worth, there they are.

[bowmaga]

If it makes anyone feel better....I felt like my bus conversion was kind of crappy when we sold it, because absolutley nothing was completed.  But the guys that bought it thought it was freaking awesome.  Everyone's busses are awesome just some are more awesome than others, of course depending on your awesome scale!  quit explaining and find a buyer for this bussers bus!!  If i could get someone or this board to give me an interest free loan for 60k, I'd buy this beauty for 65k.  Any takers?  I still think my offer a few weeks ago was a solid golden one! 

just lookin for a bus Greg

[Ncbob]

I just posted some interior pix of my bus for another MC5 owner. I know what it cost me to build the interior and do all the machanical work she needed when I bought her. Some of my neighbors think I'm some kind of a nutcase when I brag about my bus being 42 years old and being able to run with the big boys on the Interstate. Sure I'd like to off this jewell to someone at a reasonable price, say $35K which is less than I have in it..but I wouldn't want to disappoint my wife like that.

To her it's home (we full time). I think even the dog would bite me in the ankle if I accepted that figure.

From the Eternal Dreamer,

NCbob

[eddiepotts]

NCbob, you may be a nutcase. You have no neighbors. You full time, those are just people in traffic ;Dic