Buying holiday static caravan or lodge

Holiday parks and lodges are not a great investment and there are so many hidden charges.
Have you considered buying a small house or apartment in the area?
We have a second property an apartment that is low maintenance, it gives us income as a holiday let and we use it ourselves.

With the money that you could loose on a static I would go for a towing caravan. That would also give you more scope.

We have a lodge Shropshire on a small family owned site. No amenities like a shop, bar or launderette but it's beautifully kept with about 45 pitches.

We've been there for about 9 years and started with a static before upgrading to a lodge nearly 4 years ago. The fees are £3,100 per anum and the site is open for 11 months of the year.

If you buy new obviously it will be more expensive than second hand, but you'll have the standard guarantees for appliances as well as for the static/lodge.

If you buy secondhand on as existing pitch you can sometimes get decking included because it's already there, which is rather expensive if you have this as an extra.

We could if wanted stay for the full 11 months, and with most sites you come and go as you please. You need to study the contract carefully before signing with regard to increases in site fees, and some have an age limit so any static/lodge above a certain age wont be allowed.

Lodges tend to be bigger and better insulated so warmer. Our 2 bedroom lodge has 2 ensuites with a bath/over bath shower off the master bedroom. There's also small but very useful utility room with washing machine.

If you want to use it mostly for weekends, I suggest a site relatively close to home so not too much time is lost travelling.
We pay to have ours drained down (usually at the end of November) and re set beginning of March when we want to start using it again.

This is done professionally at a cost of about £60 and not to do so can invalidate your insurance if there's a problem while you're not using it over winter months.

If you're unsure, you could try booking one for a couple of weeks to give you some idea of what they're like.

We love ours, and wouldn't be without it.

Thanks for your replies Sago and MerylStreep.
A low maintenance small apartment/ flat was the other thing I was considering. Originally I thought an apartment would be more trouble than a static caravan or lodge, but now I’m not so sure.
What issues should I look out for with a small holiday apartment? I know if I don’t let it out I would need to pay council tax on it. Also there would be site maintenance charges. I definitely would not want a garden with it.
I’m not really thinking of it as an investment, just somewhere I can go for short frequent holiday breaks, such as every weekend in Sumer, spring and autumn for the next twenty years. So the issue of a static caravan or lodge losing value or eventually being worthless does not really concern me.
Likewise I hadn’t really considered getting somewhere I could sublet, as I want to be able to use it every weekend and don’t want the hassle of being a landlord, but I can see it does have the advantage for an apartment regarding council tax and for a static caravan or lodge regarding site fees.
After reading about site fees and licences I did start to wonder about a towable caravan as I have a suitable driveway and car. But not sure I really want to be driving towing a caravan or have the issues of parking it on the site or the driveway.
Thanks for your advice, any more advice or comments is welcome.

Thanks Smileless, that is the sort of lodge I was thinking of.
Just over three thousand pounds sounds affordable for site fees.
What could of price would I be looking at for a new lodge, and what kind of price for a pre-used one?
I often go for day trips to north Wales around Llandudno, so this is in easy driving distance for me, at around an hour and a half on the fast road. Anglesey, Beaumaris, Carnarvon etc isn’t much further. I might also consider West Wales, although that is a slightly longer drive.
I’m not after somewhere big, even one bedroom would be OK, with shower room, kitchen and lounge.
Does drain-down and reset refer to draining all the water out of the pipes for winter?
Thanks Smileless, all this is very useful.

If you use Facebook, can I point you in the direction of The Holiday Park Action Group? You will need to join the group to read, as they screen out park owners so that caravan owners are not victimised for posting anything negative.

Caravans and lodges are part of an unregulated industry, and people lose tens of thousands of pounds every day. You can easily pay well upwards of £75,000 for a new 'lodge' (basically a glorified caravan) and the resale value is much lower. Contracts often say that you have to sell back to the site, and they will offer you £10,000 - £15,000 after just a couple of years - it's not depreciation, it's a racket, as they will sell your almost new caravan for £60,000 to the next buyer, making another massive profit. Most of the site owners' profit comes from 'churn' (getting rid of existing owners to replace them with new ones) and they use all sorts of dirty tricks to make this happen.

You usually have to have all works (eg decking, wifi installation) done through the park, and buy things like gas from them, and they add fees to the price paid to the contractors - an average of 30%.

Rules can change year on year, so what you are told when you buy are not necessarily what will apply down the line (eg people with two dogs might find that only one is allowed, and have to sell back their caravan or get rid of a pet). Site fees can also go up massively, often to pay for 'improvements' to the park, which benefits the park owners, not the caravan owners.

Don't believe that buying on a small private park will protect you - they often change hands overnight, eg when a park owner retires, and you can very easily find that you are working with very different terms and conditions.

The group I mentioned are campaigning for regulation in the industry, and I believe that they will succeed, but until they do, buying is a huge risk, and the group don't recommend that anyone buys a static caravan or a lodge, but instead gets a tourer that can be removed from the park and taken elsewhere, and can be sold to any buyer at a fair price. Either that, or rent a caravan for holidays and save your money.

Sorry to spoil your dream, but it could easily turn out to be nightmare, as I know from experience.

Thanks Delilah, this was the kind of thing I was was worried about. It sounds like it can be a Wild West scenario. I had heard something about people being forced to sell back their lodges or caravans once they were a certain number of years of age. Thanks for the link to the Facebook group.

Our apartment has a communal garden that is maintained by the management company along with the communal hallway, window cleaning and building insurance is also included.
For this we pay £100 a month.
We did look at lodges but the depreciation is huge and some sites insist on lodges or statics being replaced when they reach a certain age.

We have had a flat which we used ourselves and let out. We had a person in the village who looked after the flat in our absence and did the change overs.

We have also had a Lodge on the same basis. We found we hardly used either ourselves so sold them.

buy a flat in or near Llandudno?

this looks ok for example?

Thanks Sago.
One hundred pounds a month for the maintenance fe sounds very reasonable. That is the situation I would want where the management company do all the maintenance.
Do you let yours out through a letting company and they take care of everything involved with letting it out as a holiday let? I hadn’t really considered buying and then letting as I want somewhere available for me to stay at every weekend, but I guess it could be a source of income in the future, and I understand council tax is not charged if it is let for a certain number of months.
I think I might go down the apartment route, especially if I could get a ground floor apartment and a guaranteed parking space.

Thanks kittylester. Yes, it much point keeping it if you don’t end if using it. I’m desperate for somewhere to get away to at the weekends near the sea, so health and finances willing it something I’d like to use almost every weekend if possible.

Thanks JaneJudge. That link was very interesting and is the kind of place I would consider.

ShropshireMiss We use a holiday company to manage the lettings, we have a fantastic cleaning company that do all the change overs.
It is very “light touch” for us.
There is a huge walk in cupboard that only we have access to so we can leave our basics in.
I’m not sure how many weeks a year you have to let it for to be exempt from council tax.

Shropshiremiss
You can buy electronic gadgets now to park your caravan.

www.cosgrovepark.co.uk/blog/10-gadgets-to-make-your-caravanning-holiday.aspx#.YhVcfi-nwgo

You would not need to tow your caravan, we store ours on a small site in north Devon, when we want to visit the site owner gets our caravan out of storage and puts it on a pitch for us. We just turn up, plug it in to the mains, fill the aqua rolls and relax.

A few years ago I inherited an amount of money and I was going to buy a static caravan in Westward Ho! Like you I would’ve used it as a weekend getaway but the site fees put me off back then and I can’t imagine what they would be like now so I didn’t/and would’nt bother. I now just rent a caravan for the weekend in fact this weekend coming I am taking my 10-year-old grandson and we are going to Croyde in North Devon from Friday to Monday at the cost of £169 obviously we will take our own food and drink but it’s not far away from me but far enough that I will consider I’ve had a break and he will love it, I know the weather probably isn’t brilliant but doesn’t really bother us too much . Anyway good luck with whatever you decide to do ?

We bought a static caravan on a site in Yorkshire, absolutely beautiful place, at first it was so exciting, beautiful walks, but after I would say 12 months, it was getting boring for the simple reason every single weekend we never went anywhere else but to the caravan.

I would say shall we go to blah blah blah this weekend and both me and Mr S came up with the same Well, we're paying for the caravan so we best go there.

It got to be same old, same old and a big cross in the box was that my mobility was getting worse so going for fabulous walks were becoming a no, no. I would lock up the house where the fire and TV had been on and drive up to the caravan to put the fire and TV on.

The site fees rose and rose, but i talked to a lot of the site who had been theres years, which was brilliant. Quite a few had places abroad they lived here so many months and then flew off to their place abroad.

Thanks Sago, the letting company does sound like a boon. I remember reading in the news they had tightened up the rules around council tax exemption so that it only applied to those who were genuinely letting out their second property.

Thanks MerylStreep for the link to the parking gadget. That would make a towing caravan a lot easier.

Thanks Marionk. That would make a real difference having a friendly site owner who would store the caravan on site. Must admit I’m not sure how confident I would be towing a caravan on either the A55 or up the horseshoe pass.

Thanks Shinamae, sounds lovely, I think Unison have got a holiday complex there with chalets.

Thanks Serendipity. I think it’s the idea of being able to spend weekends somewhere near the sea which is the main appeal for me in getting a static caravan, lodge, or apartment. So I could walk along the promenade at Llandudno or Rhos-on-Sea to get the sea breeze.

Buy a touring caravan and find a nice out of the way farm, or similiar. If you can't drive then someone will do it either as a friend/family or there are caravan towing services.Depending on the negotiation you could either leave it there or put it in storage over the winter months.You have more freedom with this method and it will save you money.My cousin who ran a caravan sales/ repair business did this for many years,and when i think about a bolthole i quickly go back to his advice.