We knew that a large 15-year-old RV could be hard to sell in this economy. Banks don't offer loans for an RV of our age and miles, even though there are many good years still left in Max. Even knowing that, the plan/hope was to sell him during our winter stay in Florida, to a cash buyer.
After doing our research and consulting an RV appraiser, we priced him very aggressively. We aimed to be the lowest of our year, make and floor-plan in the entire country. As it turned out, we were so low that we noticed that our competition lowered their prices and even then, we sold and they didn't. Some had fewer miles, but few were as clean and well maintained as ours. On the other hand, it sold so fast we had to scramble a little to find housing for the rest of the winter as I didn't want to leave Florida temps too soon.
There wasn't any one reason why we wanted a change, and while more RVing is probably in our future, we wanted to take a break and establish a home base for future adventures where we didn't have to worry about maintaining and storing an RV. There is something to be said for being able to just turn the key and walk away for a while, but I do miss Max and the freedom of the RV lifestyle...
Based on the current diesel prices, I think we might have made a great decision, unfortunately jet fuel prices follow that trend too.
A year ago, we started to seriously consider making a change, so during our annual RV travels through in the Raleigh area, we began looking for a new place. Raleigh is where my brothers and their wives live, and over the last 13 travels years we have established a few doctors. It's not too far north or too far south, so a compromise from our ability to follow the milder temperatures through the seasons. After doing some more research and taking a few tours, we had a favorite apartment complex in mind and hoped when the time came, whenever that might be, they would have something available.
After last summer's RV travels and with a Florida winter RV sale plan, we left most of the RV contents in a Raleigh storage unit before heading south for the winter.
The pictures in our ads were professionally taken, with Maren staging each picture. We quickly had phone calls and several interested parties. Some who already had RVs, like our Florida neighbor, could not commit quickly because then they would have two RVs. They would have to sell their own first. A few more were interested but couldn't decide immediately.
A buyer from New York was willing to put down a deposit and flying to pickup Max, so Max has a new family now.
After the check cleared, we had to find a place to live! We moved into a local Vacation Rental by Owner (VRBO) until the new owner picked Max up. He was heading to New York where the temps were barely above zero and often below zero at night. Together the new owner and I winterized Max for the first time in his life and hopefully come spring, no water lines will be leaking.
We stayed in VRBOs, with friends, a previously planned time-share for a week near Disney with mother-in-law, with more friends, a furnished apartment and then more friends until it was time to head north.
During that time, we kept an eye on the first-choice apartment complex near Raleigh, hoping that a floor-plan that we wanted, in the part of the complex we wanted, would become available. Then they had a deal too good to turn down, so we signed on the digital dotted line.
The new place is actually in Apex, NC, just outside Cary and Raleigh, NC. Since we hope to continue traveling, we plan to keep the Texas address for the foreseeable future. No need to change our address with everyone just yet. Doing everything online, we get very little USPS mail, but Amazon already knows us (especially Maren) well.
We have been busy furnishing the new place. Since we only kept one small piece of furniture in the Austin storage unit, we only had what was left in the RV or recently stored in Raleigh before heading south, to start our new home. The first night was basically just us and two inflatable mattresses.
We plan to head to Austin early June to pick the contents of the 5×10 storage unit up and ship it to Apex. I hope we can recognize what we left behind all though years ago. It will be sad to visit knowing we will not be coming back every year to say hello to old friends.
In the meantime, there have been lots of deliveries and furniture assembly, which we are getting quite proficient at.
So the adventure continues but even we don’t know exactly what that will look like yet.
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