Can You Make Money Renting Out Your RV?

In the United States alone, there’s over 8 million homes that have RVs, and there’s nearly one million full-time RVers in the U.S.! But if you aren’t one of those whose RV doubles as their permanent residence, you might be wondering if you could earn some extra cash with it.

So, can you make money renting out your RV? Yes, you can make $100-$300 per night, or more depending on the type of Rv you have. RV rental sites, like Outdoorsy and RVShare, offer convenient ways to list your rental, and they only take a 15-25% cut of your earnings.

Now let’s take a closer look at why you should consider it, what the process entails, and if this money-making venture is right for you (or if you should go with another method).

Why Rent Out Your RV?

For one thing, RV’s can be a very expensive vehicle to get. In fact, an RV can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $300,000! 

For comparison, you could purchase anything from a brand new small car to a large home for the prices in that range!

That being said, a reason to rent out your RV is that you would be able to either pay off your loan quickly with the money you earn, or you could quickly earn some of that money you spent back.

Another huge reason to rent out your RV is the sheer demand for them. According to Jeff Cavins, the founder of Outdoorsy, “more than 35 million people each year look to rent an RV…there are fewer than 100,000 commerically owned vehicles available from traditional rental services.” 

This means that there are a lot of people who are losing the chance (or having to fight with someone else) to rent an RV. 

To break that down numerically, 35 million people over 100,000 RVs boils down to 350 people per RV. This means that, if everybody wanted to share these RVs, those 35 million people all would only have about one day each per year with the vehicle.

This seems like it would work out great, except for the fact that most people who take road trips or camping trips don’t just go on one-day excursions.

Now, you’re probably wondering how you can help out with this problem and make some money in the process.

How To Make Money Renting Your RV

We’re going to look at two sites that will help you help those 35 million RV-less people. Those two sites are:

  • Outdoorsy
  • RVShare

Outdoorsy and RVShare have an almost identical starting process, so, we’ll take a look at that first.

To start off on your journey to rent your RV through Outdoorsy, you need to create an ad. To do this, simply go to their website and hit the “List RV” button.  

Now, you can start creating your ad. And the first step is to input your RV’s information. This includes things like:

  • Class or Type
  • Manufacturer
  • Model
  • Year
  • Length

Then, you’ll be asked to give information about the interior and amenities it offers. These are things like:

  • How many people it seats and sleeps
  • Kitchen information
  • General information
  • Entertainment information

Then, you “set your rules” for potential renters. This includes determining your position on issues such as:

  • Allowing pets
  • Allowing tailgating
  • Allowing festivals
  • Allowing smoking

Then, you’ll list the address where renters will pick up the RV, the name of your listing, your description, photos, phone number.

Then you move on to pricing. You get to choose your own pricing, but you want to  make sure you are pricing reasonably for what you’re offering. 

You also get to choose to offer weekly or monthly discounts, as this could potentially get more renters who want to rent it longer. They might be more inclined to go with you after appreciating your better deal.

You also need to set a security deposit amount, mileage rates, and the minimum rental length. Plus, you get to set your refund policy and approval setting. 

Outdoorsy website
Outdoorsy.com website

You can also offer delivery for an extra fee so the renters don’t have to go through the trouble of picking it up. This is also a good option so that you don’t have to have people come to your personal address. However, this feature is just for Outdoorsy.

Something cool about Outdoorsy and RVShare is that they offer free liability and comprehensive insurance to RV owners for listing through them. Outdoorsy does this for you for free and RVShare, while it is free to you, charges renters a fee for insurance on the RV.

Once you have done all this, you just need to wait until you get some renters and make some money! Pretty simple and easy.

How Much Can You Make?

To determine how much you can earn, let’s compare and see what both of the formerly mentioned companies take from you in percentages.

If you choose to go with RVShare, you are going to receive 85% of the total rental, because RVShare takes 15%. That’s not too bad considering that you will get 75 to 80% of the total rental from Outdoorsy, because they take a total of 20-25%!

To put this into dollar amounts, if you decided to rent your RV for $300 a night and had a two-night rental, you would make $510 from RVShare and $450 to $480 from Outdoorsy.

RVShare website
RVShare.com website

So, that percentage difference doesn’t seem like a ton, but if you had 30 two-night rentals over a year, that would be an extra $900 to $1,800 that you would make with RVShare or lose from going with Outdoorsy. 

And obviously, how much you can ultimately earn is directly related to how much you charge.

How much you can reasonably charge for your RV really depends on the type, condition, and features of your RV. You are obviously going to be able to charge more per night for a large Class A motorhome than for a fifth wheel.

What Are the Startup Costs? 

There is not really any startup up costs to rent your RV given that it is free to list on Outdoorsy and RVShare – if you already have an RV. 

If you would like to rent out an RV and don’t already have one, there is obviously a huge cost involved in the purchase of the RV.

However, as stated earlier, the benefit of renting out your RV, if you are willing to do that, means that you can use the rental fees to lessen the impact of the purchase of it.

Pros

  • You can choose your own prices
  • You can make money off of something you already own
  • Can have the opportunity to purchase an RV if you didn’t already have one

Cons

  • You could get bad renters
  • There will be more wear and tear on your RV
  • There may be a lot of competition in your location

Conclusion

All in all, you can make some good money renting out your RV. You get to choose how much you want to charge, plus there’s a high demand for it, so you’re likely to see a lot of customers.

However, if you look at some of the cons (like the fact that you could never know who the people really are in your RV) you should stop and give a little thought to if the money is worth it.

And if you don’t already have an RV, and you aren’t sure about buying one, there are other ways to make money with a vehicle you might already have.

Either way, I hope this article helped give you some good information!

Leave a Comment

Please note: By submitting a comment using the above comment form, you confirm that you agree with the storage and handling of your data by this site as detailed in our Privacy Policy.