Static Caravan Costs: Purchase Price, Running Costs and Exit

There is no single purchase price that usefully describes the market.

For initial context, Parkdean advertises some pre-owned static caravans from £9,995. That is a starting-price claim for its available stock, not a quotation for a particular caravan and pitch. ^[1]

For new units, Willerby’s published price list, effective from June 2026, gives a £39,220.35 recommended retail price including VAT for the two-bedroom Rio 28 × 12. At a different specification and size, its two-bedroom Dorchester 43 × 14 is listed at £106,121.15 including VAT. ^[2]

These examples were checked on 6 October 2026. They are published starting or list prices, not a national average, achieved sale prices or directly comparable purchase packages.

A manufacturer’s list price is not automatically the final price of an installed caravan on your chosen park. Equally, an inexpensive pre-owned unit needs to be considered alongside its condition and the pitch arrangement offered to you.

Use the published price to begin your research. Use a dated written offer for the exact caravan, pitch and included work to make your decision.

Ask the seller to separate the caravan price from anything else required to complete the purchase and start using it.

Establish whether the offer includes delivery, siting, connections, commissioning, steps or decking, furnishings, compulsory charges and any initial pitch-fee payment.

Trading Standards guidance says mandatory purchase charges should be made clear, the actual pitch fee should be disclosed before commitment and consumer prices should include VAT. ^[3]

A useful question is:

What will I have paid by the time the caravan is ready for my first stay, and what will still be due afterwards?

Check the period covered by any included site fees. A payment covering the remainder of a season is different from a complete annual fee.

Keep optional improvements separate. You may choose upgraded decking or furnishings, but they should not obscure the minimum commitment required by the offer.

Do not count deposits and included costs twice

A deposit credited against the caravan’s price is part of that price, not an additional purchase cost.

Likewise, if siting and connections are already included in the agreed package, do not add them again in your budget. If a first-year pitch fee is included, record that inclusion and the later recurring charge separately.

The same principle applies to part exchange. The value of an existing caravan put towards the purchase is still part of what you are giving up, even though it reduces the cash balance payable.

Start with the exact pitch fee, then identify the other compulsory and usage-dependent charges.

Parkdean’s published running-cost guidance separately covers pitch fees, insurance, gas and electricity, rates, water and drainage, maintenance and servicing. Its 2026 pitch-fee range is £3,250–£12,495 including VAT, but the actual charge depends on the park and holiday home. That range is not a complete annual budget. ^[4]

Inclusions also differ between operators. Hillandale’s published schedule includes specified standing charges, rates and an insurance benefit, while gas and electricity consumption are charged separately. This illustrates why you should check the package before adding separate allowances. ^[5]

For your own budget, establish the following:

Pitch fees and other fixed charges. Record the undiscounted fee, its review mechanism, any compulsory additional charges and the dates on which payments fall due.

Utilities and communications. Ask how electricity, gas, water and any internet service are charged. Use bills from a comparable pattern of use where available, rather than assuming another owner’s consumption will match yours.

Insurance. Obtain a quotation for the actual caravan, location and intended use. Check the cover required by the pitch agreement and any conditions attached to the policy. Parkdean, for example, requires insurance meeting its agreement’s minimum requirements but permits owners to arrange suitable cover elsewhere. ^[4]

Servicing, winterisation and maintenance. Identify the work required by the relevant agreements, manufacturer instructions and insurance conditions. Budget routine work separately from larger repairs.

Your own holiday spending. Travel, meals out, activities and optional improvements also affect affordability, even where they are not park charges.

Do not copy a universal maintenance or safety-check timetable from a general article. Relevant requirements depend on the installation, use and contractual arrangements. Gas safety work needs an appropriately qualified Gas Safe engineer; letting also introduces duties that must be assessed separately. ^[6][12]

A warranty is not a substitute for understanding the caravan’s condition.

Check who provides it, whether you qualify, what is covered and what remains your responsibility. Willerby’s published scheme, for example, limits its warranty to the first owner while the home remains on its original plot, with different cover for particular components. That should not be assumed to apply to a pre-owned purchase. ^[7]

Applicable consumer rights against a trader are separate from an additional warranty. The absence or expiry of a warranty does not automatically remove those rights. ^[8]

Where a condition report identifies work, get the likely cost and responsibility clarified before relying on a budget.

Keep two figures distinct:

Expected spending: routine work and identified repairs you anticipate paying for.

A contingency reserve: money kept available for uncertainty.

Moving money into a savings account for possible repairs is not itself an ownership expense. Count it as spending when used, or state explicitly that your planning model assumes the allowance will be spent.

The annual budget answers:

Can I comfortably pay the bills while I own it?

The longer-term calculation asks:

After everything I spend and whatever I recover on exit, what has ownership cost me?

For a cash purchase with no letting income, a straightforward calculation is:

Purchase and setup costs
+ running costs and repairs
+ sale or removal costs
− gross sale proceeds
= net ownership cost for the items included

Alternatively, deduct sale costs from the sale proceeds first, then subtract that net resale amount from purchase, setup and running expenditure.

Both methods give the same result when the inputs are consistent.

Do not add depreciation twice

Suppose you buy a caravan for £45,000 and later sell it for £10,000 before selling costs.

The £35,000 difference is already captured when you subtract the sale price from the purchase price. Adding another £35,000 “depreciation charge” would count that reduction twice.

The NCC and BH&HPA describe holiday caravans and lodges as leisure purchases whose resale values are likely to decline, particularly early in ownership. Their guidance does not provide a universal annual depreciation percentage that can predict your result. ^[9]

Use an explicitly stated resale assumption supported by relevant evidence where available. Do not make a budget look precise by applying an unsupported percentage.

This is a fictional budgeting example. None of its figures is a market average, a quotation, a valuation or a forecast. It is unrelated to the published price examples above.

Assume a cash purchase of £45,000, with £3,000 of separately charged setup work, giving £48,000 upfront.

Assume the proposed pitch arrangement permits the intended five-year ownership period. There is no introductory fee discount and no letting income.

The fictional first-year recurring budget is:

Scroll the table horizontally to read all columns. You can also focus it and use the arrow keys.

In this example, those costs are separate; none is already included in another row.

The purchase, setup and first year’s recurring costs therefore total £55,000 before any additional repairs or excluded spending.

Now test how different assumptions affect the same purchase over five complete annual periods, with a sale at the end of Year 5.

Five-year comparison

Scroll the table horizontally to read all columns. You can also focus it and use the arrow keys.

Calculations use unrounded annual amounts; displayed totals are rounded to the nearest pound. Year 5 follows four annual increases.

The other recurring costs begin at £2,000 a year. Additional repairs are separate from the routine maintenance already included in that amount, and each repair allowance is assumed to be fully spent.

The resale figures and sale charges are invented inputs, not estimates of what a particular caravan would achieve. Each column assumes that a permitted sale can actually be completed. There is no standard commission percentage hidden in the calculation.

The middle column is not a most-likely forecast. The higher-cost column is not a maximum possible loss. These are three illustrations, not boundaries on what could happen.

Excluded: borrowing costs, travel, holiday spending, optional improvements, separately appointed advisers or inspections, letting activity and any costs beyond the stated assumptions. Interest forgone on money used for the purchase is also excluded.

For a real purchase, any relevant unpriced item remains not yet established, not £0.

Why the two totals matter

In the middle illustration, the owner spends approximately £91,246 on the listed items and receives £10,000 on sale.

The resulting net cost is approximately £81,246.

The sale proceeds reduce the eventual cost, but they do not fund bills that must be paid years before the sale.

Your affordability decision therefore needs both the expected net cost and the timing of the cash payments.

Do not use another park’s advertised retail price as though it were a guaranteed exit value.

The NCC and BH&HPA distinguish private sale on the pitch, sale off the pitch and a trade sale back to the operator. Those transactions do not include the same package. A park’s later retail sale may include a new pitch agreement and benefits that were not part of its trade purchase from the previous owner. ^[9]

For your budget, establish the proposed sale route, the agreement position at that time, likely deductions and the evidence behind the price assumption.

Ask what you would pay if the caravan had to leave instead. Obtain an itemised quotation covering the relevant disconnection, dismantling, lifting, transport, storage or disposal work rather than assuming one generic removal price.

Trading Standards guidance says sale, transfer and removal arrangements and their charges should be clear and fair. It also stresses clarity about how long the caravan can remain on the pitch. ^[10]

Where a useful resale value depends on a continuing pitch arrangement, check that assumption explicitly.

A caravan retaining physical life is not the same as having a guaranteed buyer or a guaranteed right to remain.

A manageable monthly repayment does not show the complete purchase cost.

Obtain the actual credit quotation and record the deposit, amount borrowed, repayment term, interest and charges, total repayable and any final payment. MoneyHelper warns that longer borrowing terms can increase total interest and that the representative advertised rate may not be the rate offered to you. ^[11]

For your own cash-flow budget, record the money you contribute upfront, the repayments you make and any remaining lender settlement required at exit.

Do not add all loan repayments on top of the full cash purchase price without accounting for the loan funding. That would count the borrowed purchase amount twice.

For example, in a separate fictional purchase:

£9,000 buyer contribution + £36,000 borrowed = £45,000 purchase price.

If repaying that borrowing eventually costs £42,000 in total, the buyer’s purchase-related outlay is £51,000, before setup and running costs. It is not £45,000 plus £42,000.

Those figures illustrate the arithmetic only. They are not a finance offer.

When selling before the borrowing ends, obtain an actual settlement figure and check the agreement’s sale requirements. MoneyHelper recommends requesting a settlement statement when repaying a personal loan early; other finance arrangements need their own terms checked. ^[11]

This guide explains budgeting. It does not recommend a credit product.

Build the ownership budget without letting first. Then show any letting contribution separately.

For your own model, distinguish gross bookings from the amount remaining after the relevant management or platform charges, cleaning, utilities, maintenance, insurance and other letting costs. Do not subtract the same expense again if it is already included in the ownership budget.

Ask which weeks must be available, what personal use remains possible, whether income is estimated or guaranteed and what conditions apply.

Letting is also a different use from personal holidays. HSE includes rented holiday caravans within its landlord gas-safety guidance, and the management arrangement should identify responsibilities. Tax may also be payable, depending on the circumstances. ^[12]

Our suggested affordability test is simple:

Could you still meet the commitment during a poor letting year, without losing the personal holidays that made you want the caravan?

If the purchase only works with optimistic bookings, investigate that dependence before committing.

A cost-per-night calculation can help you test your plans, provided you use it honestly.

In the fictional middle scenario, approximately £81,246 spread over 250 nights of use across five years is about £325 per night.

At 125 nights, it is about £650 per night.

Those are calculations from the illustrative ownership costs, not additional nightly bills or comparisons with an equivalent rental property. They retain all the example’s exclusions.

Use realistic nights away, not every weekend you could theoretically visit.

Then compare like with like: similar accommodation, location, season, group size and flexibility. Keep travel and holiday spending consistent on both sides.

Ownership may still be worth more to you than the cheapest alternative. Having a familiar place, leaving belongings there and being part of a park community can matter. The calculation helps you make that choice consciously; it does not assign a price to every benefit.

You should be able to explain the purchase without relying on one headline price.

That means having the complete written package, the recurring charges and review wording, the condition and repair evidence, and a credible exit scenario with its uncertainties visible.

Check whether the planned ownership period fits the actual pitch arrangement. If it does not, change the model rather than letting the spreadsheet assume extra years.

Keep money available for costs that have not yet been resolved. Do not count hoped-for negotiation savings, future rental income or an unconfirmed resale figure as though they were secured.

Where price information or obligations are unclear, ask for clarification before relying on them. Government-backed Trading Standards guidance emphasises that buyers should be able to understand the economic consequences of the agreements they enter. ^[13]

Park & Lodge’s role is to investigate the proposal in front of you, not give every caravan the same depreciation percentage or promise that the cheapest advertised unit is the best purchase.

For an identified caravan, Purchase & Negotiation brings together the package price, ongoing charges, relevant agreements, important assurances and exit position. We explain established figures, assumptions and unresolved questions, then challenge and negotiate where there is credible scope.

For buyers who still need to find a suitable park and unit, Full Buying starts with the brief and search before moving into the chosen proposal’s investigation and negotiation.

Our commercial and documentary work does not replace a technical inspection, a formal valuation or appropriate legal, tax or financial advice.

Include any adviser or inspection fee in your own budget. Do not assume that it will be recovered through a discount.

The aim is a purchase you can afford to enjoy, not just afford to complete.