"Real" Dealer Price
Fourwinds,
The key to your answer is to first know the manufacturer's suggested retail price, or MSRP. All RV manufacturers supply such a form, just as the automobile manufacturers do. But they are not required to show it to you. The first thing that I would suggest is to only shop dealers who will show you this from. RVs have a profit margin built into the MSRP of between 28 - 40%, depending upon the price of the unit. Generally, higher priced RVs have a larger profit margin. The RV Consumer Group (
www.rv.org) suggests that you should never pay any more than 80% of MSRP. Reasonable discounts from MSRP will range from about 20% at the lower end of the price range to as much as 30% at the high end. In most cases, 25% is in the right range to look for.
All of this is based upon the real price of a new RV. If you have a trade-in you must expect to receive the fair wholesale value for it if you go by the above pricing. Remember that a dealer must pay a salesman to sell the trade-in as well as to make his normal profit on that sale.