Photo by Roman Romanenko
YES! You want to campervan New Zealand! We're so pumped for you! It's the best way to travel NZ!
You may be on the fence still wondering how you should travel New Zealand. Should you bus, rent or buy a campervan? You're considering buying one, but before you take the leap you want to know what other travelers experienced.
You're in the right place! We traveled NZ for five months by buying a campervan, traveling the North and South Island, and then selling the campervan to someone else. When selling the camper, we made NZ$800 on it!
However, when we were thinking about buying, it felt like an intimidating process and we just wanted to hear from someone else what they really went through.
Now that we've campervanned NZ by buying a campervan and traveling for several months, we totally recommend it to everyone and we even wrote a guide book on how to do it!
To give you more of our details, here's the nitty-gritty details of our experience buying and selling a campervan in New Zealand.
OUR EXPERIENCE
BUYING & SELLING A CAMPERVAN IN NEW ZEALAND
We got the courage to buy a campervan from our friends Sam and Jo. They campervanned New Zealand before us. They bought their campervan for NZ$2,000 and sold it for NZ$4,000.
Since they had success, we wanted to give it a go, too!
OUR TIMELINE
We arrived in Auckland, NZ in December 2014, the beginning of summer, and spent six days looking at fourteen campervans around town. In hindsight, this was a waste of time and one of the many reasons we wrote our guide book for you on how to buy one to save you heaps of time and money and stress figuring it out yourself.
We looked for campervans at car fairs and we met sellers from Trade Me® (NZ's eBay, Gumtree or Craigslist) selling their campers.
We also considered buying from a local New Zealander who offered a 60% buy back deal.
A buy back deal is when the person or company you buy from guarantees they’ll buy the vehicle back from you at the end of your travels for a discounted price. We saw car fairs, dealerships, and some local Kiwis offering to buy vehicles back for 40-60% of what they sold it for.
Since our friends made NZ$2,000 on their campervan, we decided to try to buy cheaper from a backpacker and make more selling.
BOUGHT OUR CAMPERVAN
We bought a non self contained 1993 Toyota Estima minivan, named Bernie, on Trade Me for NZ$3,000 in cash from two English backpackers.
Bernie had 256,000 km on him. He used petrol, had four cylinders, was automatic, and was chain driven. The WoF and license (rego) were up to date. The back seats were already fully removed, the bed was fully installed, and all of the bedding and cookware were included (this saves a lot of money) when we bought him.
TRAVELED BOTH ISLANDS
We traveled over 16,000 km crisscrossing the North and South Islands for five months.
Our travels in New Zealand completely changed our lives. The freedom and beauty we experienced opened our minds to what's possible for us. We hope the country gifts you the same experience!
We have our top ten favorite spots in New Zealand for you, too, in Our Top 10 Free and Cheap Campsites. You gotta check out these spots yourself!
SOLD OUR CAMPERVAN
A month before we were booked to fly out of New Zealand, we put an ad on Trade Me to sell Bernie in Auckland. We also put up “For Sale” signs on our back windows with our cell phone number for folks to call us if interested.
WHY WE SOLD OUR CAMPERVAN IN AUCKLAND
We decided to sell Bernie in Auckland, because flights were cheaper from Auckland to Sydney (our next destination).
Also, we strategized where to sell Bernie based on the major travel route for backpackers traveling NZ. Most campervanning travelers fly into Auckland on the North Island at the beginning of the summer and finish their trip on the South Island in Christchurch at the end of the summer.
We were one of the many who traveled from north to south, too. And, we planned to sell Bernie at the end of the summer in low season like everyone else, too.
So, we anticipated being one of the zillions of backpackers selling their campervan in low season in Christchurch. With this, we felt our odds for finding a buyer were lower in Christchurch than in Auckland. Again, we couldn’t find many blogs with guides on how to sell a campervan, so we went with our gut feeling.
We arrived in Auckland one week before our flight to Australia and allowed ourselves this one-week to sell our campervan.
While selling, we received two responses from our Trade Me ad and one phone call from our “For Sale” signs.
It worked! The first person to look at our campervan was a local Kiwi. He gave us a down payment of NZ$500 and wanted to complete the transaction a week later after he had more money from selling a bike. This meant we had a buyer and we had our van for an entire extra week to continue exploring. So instead of staying in Auckland trying to sell our van, we shot over to Mount Maunganui and enjoyed our last week at the beach!
Thankfully, all went well with the final transaction. We officially sold Bernie to the local Kiwi in May 2015 (NZ's autumn) for NZ$3,800 with 272,000 km on him.
We were pumped! We had sold Bernie for NZ$800 more than we had bought him for!
CAR TROUBLES ON THE ROAD
Thankfully, we didn’t have any emergency tow truck situations.
We did have to complete maintenance on Bernie, but the maintenance was normal upkeep every vehicle needs to keep running smoothly.
We contribute our good fortune to:
Taking the van to a mechanic for a pre-purchase inspection before we bought it. These cost anywhere from NZ$80 to NZ$120 and well worth it!
Making the suggested repairs from the mechanic during the pre-purchase inspection right away, including a new battery and a new tyre.
Completing the regularly suggested maintenance for the van during our travels, like changing the oil and the air filter.
All of the extra costs for repair work, maintaining the on-road costs, insurance, and getting our pre-purchase inspection totaled NZ$2,600.
how much does campervanning cost?
To show you the finances of our buying and selling experience, here are the real numbers.
Here's the purchase price of Bernie, how much we spent on extra costs, how much we sold him for, and our overall cost.
This does not include our nightly campsite fees or the cost of petrol on our trip. You can find how much that'll cost you over here.
There were extra costs we incurred by buying a camper. These included the price of the pre-purchase inspection, insurance for five months (NZ$126 with AA), maintenance and repair costs, and updating our On-Road Costs. On-Road Costs are mandatory inspections and fees that need to be updated to drive on NZ’s roads. Overall, the extra costs equaled NZ$2,600.
For five months of traveling, our overall cost was NZ$1,800 was awesome! It came out to about NZ$12 per day.
For us, buying a camper was way better on our wallet than handing over NZ$4,000 to a campervan rental company. The savings kept us traveling longer!
Oh, the millions of lessons learned in our buying experience! We made so many mistakes in our buying process. The lessons learned drove us to write our guide book for you on how to buy a campervan.
LESSONS LEARNED
After looking back on our buying experience, we realized we wasted a lot of time (in days) that could have been spent exploring New Zealand- all because we weren’t strategic or efficient with our time.
We wrote our guide book for you to make your experience way faster than ours. Grab a copy of our guide below and save yourself time, stress, and money in figuring out for yourself. We already made all the mistakes for you:)
READY TO BUY A CAMPERVAN, BUT NOT SURE HOW?
We've got you covered!
Get our step-by-step guide to save you money, time, and stress figuring it out yourself. Let's get you on the road exploring right away.
We guide on where to buy, how to get one on a budget, what to look for when test driving, tips to negotiate the price down, what government forms to complete, how to find free and cheap campsites, and heaps more.
“Your book was soooo stinkin helpful!”