NIRVC Consignment Program

[wjl7727]

I used the consignment program at NIRVC in Nashville to sell my previous coach and I purchased my current coach there as well (it was also being sold on consignment). I worked with Marshall Hollingshead and was very pleased with both transactions. There were no surprises. I would not hesitate to use them again.

[Granite17]

Originally Posted by Runaway4002

Based on the positive feedback we did meet with NIRV in Las Vegas. They were unwilling to accept our coach in the consignment program. They currently have excess inventory (92 coaches on the lot) and will not take a coach for consignment if it has over 65,000 miles. We have 85,000 on a 7 year old diesel pusher. The consignment manager noted at that mileage the coach was just barely broken in as it should go 500,000 miles if properly maintained as our maintenance records supported. He stated that the banks they use to finance coach sales will not make a loan on any coach that has over 65,000 miles, no exceptions...period! Needless to say I was disappointed. I was even more disappointed when he said he would be happy to wholesale the coach out for me at $130,000 yet he said the book value indicated the coach should be listed at $219,000 and sell for around $200,000. I understand the RV market is constantly changing but I was not impressed with the NIRV consignment program based on my experience.

Thanks for updating us on your consignment situation.
That definitely is a shock to hear that banks are not interested in financing a coach that has over 65,000 miles!

I wonder if this is a regional banking decision or if this is the norm now with money tightening. 65,000 miles is certainly is not unusual for those of us that enjoy using our coaches on a regular basis.

[Angie Morell]

Originally Posted by Runaway4002

Based on the positive feedback we did meet with NIRV in Las Vegas. They were unwilling to accept our coach in the consignment program. They currently have excess inventory (92 coaches on the lot) and will not take a coach for consignment if it has over 65,000 miles. We have 85,000 on a 7 year old diesel pusher. The consignment manager noted at that mileage the coach was just barely broken in as it should go 500,000 miles if properly maintained as our maintenance records supported. He stated that the banks they use to finance coach sales will not make a loan on any coach that has over 65,000 miles, no exceptions...period! Needless to say I was disappointed. I was even more disappointed when he said he would be happy to wholesale the coach out for me at $130,000 yet he said the book value indicated the coach should be listed at $219,000 and sell for around $200,000. I understand the RV market is constantly changing but I was not impressed with the NIRV consignment program based on my experience.

Good Morning Runaway4002,

I wanted to share some thoughts about how NIRVC approaches consignments. We are in the business of customers for life, and when it comes to consignments, we have two customers. The customer consigning his coach, and the customer who buys the coach. We can’t favor one over the other, or just make one of those two customers happy. It needs to be a win-win for both of them. Remember, price is what you pay… value is what you get. [emoji6]Every buyer wants to see value in their purchase, just like you would.

Our top concern when consigning a coach is our ability to efficiently sell a coach at a fair price. There are two primary factors which will impact how quickly a coach will sell, and they are:

1 - Price
2 - Condition (including mileage)

We treat our consignment units exactly like we treat our own inventory. Our RV Lifestyle Specialists are indifferent as to whether it’s a new coach, a used coach, or a consignment coach. Their commission is the same across the board. We decor, photograph, advertise, PDI, finance, and deliver consignments exactly the same as we do our own coaches. Buyers purchasing a consignment from NIRVC will get the exact same treatment!

NADA Book Value for your 2015 Ventana 4002 coach is $160,050. Here are all 2015 Newmar Ventanas currently listed for sale RV Trader:

4369 Ventana 13,231 miles $177,900 longer and most popular floorplan.

4003 Ventana 52,464 miles $189,900

4369 Ventana 55,300 miles $198,743 longer and most popular floorplan.

4037 Ventana 32,861 miles $199,999

4369 Ventana 47,520 miles $209,500 longer and most popular floorplan.

4037 Ventana 60,397 miles $214,500

4037 Ventana 60,000 miles $249,000

You’ll notice right away all of them have a lot fewer miles than your coach with 85,000 miles. Plus three of the Ventanas are 43 footers, and Newmar’s most popular floorplan. Remember, RVTrader is a listing of all coaches which haven’t sold for the price they’re currently advertised for.

I agree with you, these diesel chassis are built to run hundreds of thousands of miles. However, that’s not how purchasers, or banks view high mileage coaches. They view the mileage as a strong indicator of how much wear and tear there has been on the house, hence the banks limitations on mileage.

If our consignment specialist advised you to list your 40 foot Ventana for $219,000, and then hope it sells for $200,000… well, that was a mistake on our part, and I sincerely apologize. Clearly, I need to do some more training and correcting on my end. If I were serious about selling, I would want to be advertised at a price below the $184,900 with fewer miles.

As far as bids from wholesalers go, we can always make a courtesy call to our wholesalers to see if they are interested in your coach. Wholesale bids will be less than the NADA Book value of $160,050. What our consignment specialist discussed with you was not an out-right buy bid, but rather an idea of what he felt a Wholesaler would most likely offer, which would be closer to $130,000.

The number of coaches we have for sale at our Las Vegas location has no bearing on whether we would accept a coach on consignment or not. While 92 units may sound like a like a lot to you, 34 of those 92 units are already sold, and in the process of being PDI’s and delivered. Historically, our company turns its inventory over 12 times a year. If you take out the already sold units, we really only have 58 units available for sale. Which isn’t enough for a store that sells between 50 to 60 coaches per month. We desperately need all the good inventory we can get!

I’ve learned from personal experience my Motorhome will never be worth more to someone else than it is to me. I’m sorry you’re “not impressed” with our consignment program, and I do understand your disappointment. I hope you can understand from where I sit, I have to do everything I can to make both the consignor and the buyer happy. If we already know none of our 23 lenders will finance your coach due to the mileage, I believe honesty is the best policy, which means we need to tell you up front. We’d never want to knowingly mislead you into believing there’s a large pool of buyers for an un-financeable used coach. Unlike many out there, we would never take your unit in on consignment just so we could use it to sell against.

I’m sorry we were not able to take your coach in on consignment, but as you mentioned a well-loved and well-maintained coach can last a long time on the road! I’m sure it will move quickly when marketed at the right price.

[Granite17]

Angie, thanks so much for taking the time to comment and help us understand the consignment process.

65,000 miles was mentioned as the banks cut off point for financing and I’am wondering if this applies to luxury line models as well?

For instance we have a 2022 London Aire and easily run 15,000 miles a year.
At the 4 year point or 60,000 miles, should one just plan on selling prior to the 65,000 miles to maximize the resale ?

Thanks for always sharing your input on this forum!
John

[DKRITTER]

I’ve waffled back and forth since this was originally posted as to whether to post on here about our experience with NIRVC Consignment. My post is primarily a buyer beware than anything else. We have bought multiple RV’s from NIRVC and will if we keep to the Newmar brand we will be buying from NIRVC. Our sales experience and especially our service experience has simply been excellent. That said our consignment experience was less than what we had hoped for.

1. The assumption and expectation were we would sell our Dutch Star.
2. Communication would be part of the process.
3. Deciding to sell a MH in early summer 2022 in the end was not a good idea.
4. My value of my MH was higher than current market conditions.


I contacted the sales rep who had sold the DS and she directed us to the rep who did consignments, and all was well. We walked through the process and agreed to consign. We dropped off the coach and waited (Patience isn’t one of my virtues) for it to be put on the website.
When it went up it was fabulous, wonderful pictures, description everything. We waited, nothing.

I had hoped for some feed back on the coach, price, condition, like this, don’t like this and such but nothing. I finally emailed the rep, no response. 2nd email a few days later no response. 3rd email thought the rep might have left so I included Angie and received an immediate response. Which was I thought it would have sold by now we should lower the price.
This went back and forth for the next 2 months with us lowering the price once I think.
Part of my disappointment is I had no information to take a direction other than drop the price.
At the end of the 90 days, it was apparent that I valued the MH more than the market did.
I sent an email asking to terminate the agreement. I was informed about the 1% listing fee. This was a huge mistake on my part for not completely reading the agreement I signed. My bad

When we got home with it I was happy because I love my Dutch Star. A few minutes later my wife noticed our Dyson Animal vacuum left hanging on the closet wall was gone. Again, the assumption was it would sell so, we would never know it was taken and the new owner would never know it wasn’t there. I emailed the rep about it, he said he would check but never heard back from him.

In closing if you do decide to sell/consign you coach, before you do be very realistic about the market value of it and be very aware of market timing.

[Runaway4002]

Angie,
I appreciate your response. I only wish you had replied to the e-mail I sent you as suggested by a previous poster on this thread. If you had I likely would not have wasted my time going to the Las Vegas location. I guess that's water under the bridge. I understand you are the face of the NIRV consignment program and your need to defend it. I don't appreciate that for me you made this personal. We all know the history of our coach and the condition of it. You do not know the condition and the consignment guy in Las Vegas did not care once he knew the mileage would preclude them from being able to finance the RV with a new buyer. You quoted the NADA book value as being $160,050 but that does not take into account the $40,000 of options at the time of purchase, the $10,000 in upgrades we had done after purchase, the fact that we have 8 brand new Michelin RXV tires, 8 brand new AGM house batteries, all new Flexsteel furniture that is less than 2 years old, etc. The NADA value as well as the wholesale pricing is based solely on the VIN number which does not contain any of this information, it only states it is a 2015 40 Newmar Ventana RV. I too am sorry this did not work out for either of us.

[Angie Morell]

Originally Posted by Granite17

Angie, thanks so much for taking the time to comment and help us understand the consignment process.

65,000 miles was mentioned as the banks cut off point for financing and I’am wondering if this applies to luxury line models as well?

For instance we have a 2022 London Aire and easily run 15,000 miles a year.
At the 4 year point or 60,000 miles, should one just plan on selling prior to the 65,000 miles to maximize the resale ?

Thanks for always sharing your input on this forum!
John

Hi Granite17!

Thanks for your question and thanks in advance for not shooting the messenger [emoji6]! Haha! I’m here to share data and information. And, I’m certainly not saying your coach is unmarketable.

Broadly speaking, lenders restrict what they will do based on three criteria, which are the credit of the borrower, the age of the coach (i.e. they won’t lend on coaches older than 10 model years), and mileage (65,000). I double checked myself, and there is only a single lender who will consider lending on mileage above 65,000 miles. I’m guessing all three of these factors weigh heavily into the statistic of why 4.3 years is the median time someone owns a coach. [emoji6]

What I am suggesting is, when the pool of banks is reduced to a single lender, it greatly reduces the pool of buyers. But, a reduction in the number of lenders certainly doesn’t affect cash buyers, and cash buyers tend purchase the more expensive coaches.

For example, new Class A Diesel sales are down -37.29% from April 2022 thru October 2022. But, when you stratify those same sales by dollar amounts, maybe you can better see what I’m trying to say. Coaches with sales prices above $260,000 were actually up 590 units (15.79%) year over year, while coaches with sales prices below $260,000 were down 1,753 units (-45.84%). Coaches with lower sales prices are more dependent on lenders than are the more expensive coaches.

I hope this information answers your question. Feel free to contact me if you have more questions. As always, I’m here to help! [emoji5]

[Eddie Braley]

Originally Posted by DKRITTER

I’ve waffled back and forth since this was originally posted as to whether to post on here about our experience with NIRVC Consignment. My post is primarily a buyer beware than anything else. We have bought multiple RV’s from NIRVC and will if we keep to the Newmar brand we will be buying from NIRVC. Our sales experience and especially our service experience has simply been excellent. That said our consignment experience was less than what we had hoped for.

1. The assumption and expectation were we would sell our Dutch Star.
2. Communication would be part of the process.
3. Deciding to sell a MH in early summer 2022 in the end was not a good idea.
4. My value of my MH was higher than current market conditions.


I contacted the sales rep who had sold the DS and she directed us to the rep who did consignments, and all was well. We walked through the process and agreed to consign. We dropped off the coach and waited (Patience isn’t one of my virtues) for it to be put on the website.
When it went up it was fabulous, wonderful pictures, description everything. We waited, nothing.

I had hoped for some feed back on the coach, price, condition, like this, don’t like this and such but nothing. I finally emailed the rep, no response. 2nd email a few days later no response. 3rd email thought the rep might have left so I included Angie and received an immediate response. Which was I thought it would have sold by now we should lower the price.
This went back and forth for the next 2 months with us lowering the price once I think.
Part of my disappointment is I had no information to take a direction other than drop the price.
At the end of the 90 days, it was apparent that I valued the MH more than the market did.
I sent an email asking to terminate the agreement. I was informed about the 1% listing fee. This was a huge mistake on my part for not completely reading the agreement I signed. My bad

When we got home with it I was happy because I love my Dutch Star. A few minutes later my wife noticed our Dyson Animal vacuum left hanging on the closet wall was gone. Again, the assumption was it would sell so, we would never know it was taken and the new owner would never know it wasn’t there. I emailed the rep about it, he said he would check but never heard back from him.

In closing if you do decide to sell/consign you coach, before you do be very realistic about the market value of it and be very aware of market timing.

Good afternoon DKRITTER,

First, we want to thank you for being such a loyal NIRVC customer. We truly value your business, and really appreciate you! It’s certainly not lost on us who pays our paychecks. I’ve taken some time to dig into this to see where we can improve.

It should be of no surprise to anyone who knows our CEO Brett Davis, that he loves data! I’m convinced he sleeps with his spreadsheets under his pillow. LOL. Consequently, we are the only company I know of who maintains a database of all our pre-owned coaches we have ever sold versus what their NADA Book Value was on the date they sold. With well over 10,000 sales in our database, this has proven to be very accurate when determining what price a coach will transact at. We can narrow values down to year, make, model, and floor plan with a high degree of accuracy.

Our consignment specialists use NADA Book Value and our proprietary database to determine what price where we believe the coach will actually sell for, plus, we pull all the market data to see how many similar coaches are on the market, and what prices they are advertised at. We use this exact same approach when determining both the listing price, and the sales price of our own inventory. We treat consignments exactly the same as we treat our own inventory (advertised amount, expected selling price, delivery, etc.), and our RV Lifestyle Specialists are paid exactly the amount both. During the consignment meeting we provide our recommendations on not listing prices, and what price we expect the sale the transact for. We know coaches rarely sell for the amount they are listed for. In the end, it is left up to the seller on final pricing, and as long as it fits within our guidelines we will run with it, knowing the market is always fluid and not static. Particularly, in our current market. NADA publishes a new Book every 60 days, plus Class A Diesel coach sales are down 37% since April, so it’s a bit like trying to catch a falling knife right now.

I have reviewed your email chains with our consignment specialist. The first email was on June 6, about 3 weeks after you had dropped your coach off. You were asking for feedback at the time, and concerns about diesel prices rising. Our Consignment Specialist responded back same day. He said your coach had shown well, and looked great! He also let you know diesels were still selling, but recommended a $5,000 reduction in the advertised price. You decided at the time to leave pricing as is, and we certainly respect your decision.

You emailed again about 2 weeks later asking if there were any offers, and requesting additional insights. We did miss your email, which makes me sick, and sincerely apologize. Thankfully, you followed up (which you shouldn’t have had to), and sent another email. Our Consignment Specialist apologized for missing your email. He stated we had received positive feedback and comments on how clean your coach was. He also recommended reducing the listing price based on market comparisons, which he provided. Our recommendation was $209,995, and you felt a reduction to $219,995 would be sufficient, and we’d see where it went from there.

After another month you decided to remove your coach from our consignment program since we were approaching the 90 day mark. Our Consignment Specialist conveyed we’d be more than happy to keep your coach listed, but recommend adjusting the listing price due to continued deterioration of the market conditions, and where similar coaches were selling at the time.

We’ll own and sincerely apologize for your Dyson Vacuum. We always let consignors know to bring their coach to us emptied of all personal belongings. Once we receive a coach on consignment, our wash and detail team immediately starts cleaning and prepping it for pictures and the front line. If there happens to be anything left in a coach, including our own trade-ins, we donate those items to our local women’s shelter. It’s unfortunate, but I would be more than happy to reimburse you for the cost of your vacuum. Please give me a call at your convenience, so I can process your reimbursement quickly. You may reach me at 469-277-8589.

Best regards,

[Flyer15015]

Mike, Mary,
You know that selling yours yourself and buying something else from a private person for cash is the BEST approach.
Anything less than that will cost you $$$. The only question is how much.

I search RV Trader every so often, just to see what's out there. I also look on the IRV2 "for sale" thread, just to see what new listings there are and I check pricings on both for coaches similar to mine. Just gives me a feel for the market.

Dealers, brokers, consigners are in the business to make money and I don't blame them for that. They have property and employees that must be paid.

I just choose not to participate in that equation.

But that's just me. You do what you will.

Mike in Colorado

[tankcj]

I don’t mean to hijack this thread but I have to say that I don’t think I have ever seen a dealer be more responsive to iRV2 member’s concerns/questions as NIRVC. It’s not just this post. I’ve seen numerous sales and technical questions being addressed by NIRVC. While I’m sorry that the OP’s experience wasn’t positive, I have to say bravo to the NIRVC team for addressing it.

[Mr. T]

I'm staying at an RV park in Arizona. Our neighbor just purchased a (new to them) Motor Coach. He put his older coach on consignment at Freedom RV and said they charge a flat fee of $450 and take care of all the paperwork.
If that's true, (and really if it's not) charging 7.5% of the selling price is just ridiculous.

[redbaron73]

Originally Posted by Mr. T

I'm staying at an RV park in Arizona. Our neighbor just purchased a (new to them) Motor Coach. He put his older coach on consignment at Freedom RV and said they charge a flat fee of $450 and take care of all the paperwork.
If that's true, (and really if it's not) charging 7.5% of the selling price is just ridiculous.

There is more to that story. No one would do the paperwork for $450, let alone the liability of being the dealer on a sale transaction.

I can see it being that price as part of a package deal when buying another coach, etc.

Even cash deals have a ton of paperwork and liability for dealers.

[purrin along]

Originally Posted by redbaron73

There is more to that story. No one would do the paperwork for $450, let alone the liability of being the dealer on a sale transaction.

I can see it being that price as part of a package deal when buying another coach, etc.

Even cash deals have a ton of paperwork and liability for dealers.

That's what I was thinking as well.You also have to factor in the dealer prep,and just keeping the coach plug in to power for who knows how long.

[eastern1]

I had my coach on RV Trader for 2 months and didn't get a single legit offer. NIRVC opened up here in VA so I took it to them and consigned it with Marshall Hollingsworth. He had an offer in 7-10 days and after a little back and forth it was sold for what I feel is a very fair price to both parties. The commission for them to detail it, store it, show it and handle all the paper work was well worth it. Matt, Marshall and Leisha at NIRVC in VA did an outstanding job!