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Just curious, what do you think the range for resale of a CLC teardrop camper would be? It seems like there is a market for things like this these days.
JakeM
Good question, Jake, I have wondered the same thing. I don’t think I’d sell the one I built for less than $15,000.
After having built it, it seems like it is worth that much to me, but the question is what potential buyers would pay. I think $15K is too high, but maybe I’m wrong.
Unless there was an art collector with a major fetish for pretty teardrop campers, you’d likely be hard pressed to get more than $5k for one of our pieces of rolling art.
Maybe check with an insurance company and get it appraised and insured?
ph_up may be high, but Bob is definitely low. I’ve shopped for teardrops a lot, and retail for a conventional teardrop, outfitted like CLC’s model, is well above five grand. Before I discovered the CLC trailer, I considered a Little Guy MyPod. It has no galley, and the basic model retails for $8000. The market is very hot. Little Guy is already sold out of the 2017 model, and when I called a local dealer a few weeks ago, he said I’d wait at least two months. The 5 Wide model from Little Guy, which has a galley and a more conventional shape, starts at ten grand and is also sold out for the model year.
The additional aesthetic value could also surprise you. Check out the Hutte Hut at huttehut.com. It’s larger, but the exterior style is similar, and it’s also built from Okume marine ply. This video gives a better idea of the size.
It has maybe twice the interior space and no galley. I don’t want a galley, so this trailer seemed ideal for me until I saw the price. Starts at $63,900!
Here’s a list of teardrop manufacturers:
http://smalltrailerenthusiast.com/manufacturers-2/
If the build quality is high and includes all features of the CLC model, twenty grand wouldn’t shock me.
It would take a big pile pile of cash to get my CLCTD away from me. I plan to get many years of use out of it and that’s invaluable to me. The Hutte Hut looks interesting but lost me at “man bun”.
I’m thinking roughly $12k. My direct costs were right at $5500 all in, and 300 hours labor at $10 an hour is $3000, so call it $9k – $10k production cost. $15k would not be outrageous though.
$12k was also my first thought, but frankly, I wouldn’t trust anyone earning $10/hour (in the U.S.) to build this trailer for me. The cost of employing someone doing this sort of work at CLC is probably closer to $20/hour or more, and I wouldn’t do it for less than $50. On the other hand, someone skilled at building this camper could do it in half the time.
But cost is not price anyway. If Hutte Hut sells many campers for 64 grand, this thing easily has a market at $15-20k. If it’s two feet longer and a foot higher, without a galley, its dimensions are comparable to the Hutte Hut, and it’s every bit as beautiful inside and out. It only needs a highway-worthy trailer and some refinements on the interior to be very comparable, and these changes don’t add dramatically to the cost.
CLC has a heavenly business model. John Harris should get Obama’s Nobel prize.
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