blue book values

[farwest]

Looking at Nada blue book and wonder what is consider standard equipment on a Jayco I'm selling and one that I'm looking at to buy. Are slides considered standard equipment on trailers are do you add them in? What about other stuff?

Thanks,

Whitt

[jloco]

The NADA values are really hard to figure out IMO. They're often over inflated as well.
The slides are standard equipment on the models as far as I know. I've never seen slides as an option. Either the particular model has them or they don't.

I would also look online at rigs currently 'for sale' to get an idea of what they're actually selling for vs the book value.

[farwest]

Thank you it would be nice to have a system setup to get actual current units that have been sold and for what they have sold for.


Whitt

[Flapper]

Had to go through this when ins. co. totaled my 5th.

Go to jayco.com, and do a search on your year and model. If not too old, you'll find the specifications and price page, usually with a box to add on optional extras - all using the msrp at that time.
Note Jayco's msrp for the base unit and then again with your extras added.

When using NADA don't check any of the boxes.

Then take the price shown on NADA, figure out how much percent less it is compared to Jayco's base msrp. Then apply that percent to the full Jayco msrp of the unit with the extras.

Finally, compare that number to what you find out there for same year/model units found for sale (which may be hard to do an apples-to-apples if your unit has a lot of Jayco's options).

The mistake a lot of people make is checking all the NADA boxes, which can really overvalue the unit. Meaning your asking price will be way high, and buyers pass it up.

My insurance co.'s adjuster seemed to base most of his quote on units for sale, with discounts added for options, which resulted in a check higher than NADA for me. My dealer, who I asked to double check the ins. co., by pricing my unit as if they were selling it off the lot, would only quote the base NADA price (without adding options) as what his sale price would be.

[Flapper]

Originally Posted by farwest

Thank you it would be nice to have a system setup to get actual current units that have been sold and for what they have sold for.


Whitt

Supposedly that is what NADA is...but who knows where they actually get their numbers? Based on my dealer, and my bank, it is the main source they use for benchmarking value. Insurance companies adjusters have a bit better system to find prior sales of units, but based on what they sent me to show their basis for my check, it isn't really that much better than you googling things yourself to see what others are asking.

[clubhouse]

NADA very specifically says not to add things that are standard equipment. In the case of Jayco standard equip is the base unit + any mandatory Customer Value Package.

Slides are standard equip.

In TT/5er there aren't many extras to select. Maybe extra AC, slide topper, etc.

That said, my experience is NADA is extremely high in their values. I purchased my 26BH brand new in 2011, NADA valued it at 1 year used higher than I purchased it new for.

I both bought and solid units private party, never did we get much close than ~80% of the nada values.

[BuddyRay]

X2 on clubhouse's comments on handling options.

For a number of years, one of the technology startups that I was part owner/manager of was Intellimedia Commerce. Cox Enterprises invested 25% in our company and we used to do consulting and software development for Cox Enterprises Manheim Auto Auction division. Manheim owns AutoTrader - a competitor to the Kelly Blue Book / NADA Guide.

My own company - Intellimedia Commerce also bought and operated The Gold Book price guide for a while. The Gold Book is a price guide for rare and exotic cars. That was fun - we went to almost all the exotic car auctions for several years to collect price data.
And I was part of a team that evaluated Kelly Blue Book when my own company flirted with buying them (we couldn't afford it).
So I understand how this industry works and even personally wrote some of the software used to generate the price data.

Here's how the industry works:
There are auctions across the country where dealers buy/sell units (used cars, trucks, RV's, Constructions equipment, etc.) If a dealer takes a unit in on trade and already has too many of that type/model OR if he just doesn't think he can sell it on his lot, he takes it to Auction. If a dealer needs more used stock, they go to auction and buy.

The market sets the price at these auctions. Unpopular brands/models go cheap. Hot sellers go high. OH, and all the data is "regionalized." For example, Airstreams may pull a much higher price in California where they are more common than in West Virginia where you rarely see one. Nowdays they also pull in data from DMV, and other public records and buy data from the banking and insurance industry to add to auction data. Availability and quality of this type data varies by state.

All the price guides use very sophisticated software to watch the data carefully and base their price guides on them. They then "Adjust" these prices to a "low/medium/high" condition dealer and retail price. These adjustments are based on industry accepted margins.

What really surprised me, however, was the editorial "judgement" that was frequently applied. The software would "flag" those brands/models/years where insufficient data existed to create a statistically sound value. A human editor would then look at the data, the prices for years + and -, etc. and "make up" an appropriate value. Now granted, these people were pretty knowledgeable about the vehicles/RV/Trucks, etc. that they were responsible for - they spent all day looking at prices. But still - it was their editorial decisions what often determined what the dealer offered for your old clunker :-).

Bottom line - if you're buying/selling a brand/model that is popular, late model with many units moving through auction then the "book" value is going to be highly accurate. Rarer/older models - more guesswork.

But dealers and insurance companies rely on this data for millions of decisions each month - and the price industry is HIGHLY competitive. If a dealer thinks NADA isn't accurate they will switch to another subscription. So they work very hard to make their price guides reflect the market accurately.