Last Updated on If your motorhome spends most of the year parked up, you’ve probably wondered whether you should be earning something from it — or whether it’s time to let it go entirely.
We buy and sell used motorhomes for a living, and we get asked this a lot. So here’s our honest take, including the part most articles on this subject leave out: hiring out your motorhome changes what it’s worth when you eventually come to sell it, and it changes who will buy it.
That’s not a reason to rule hire out. It’s a reason to go in with your eyes open.
The short version
- Realistic net income from hiring out is roughly £1,500–£3,500 a year after commission, insurance, servicing and repairs — well below the headline figures rental platforms advertise.
- Once your motorhome has been hired out, it becomes an ex-hire vehicle. Most dealers won’t buy ex-hire stock, including us. That narrows your buyer pool and usually costs you money at resale.
- Hire makes most sense if you were keeping the motorhome anyway and want to offset running costs. It makes far less sense as a way to squeeze value out of a van you were planning to sell.
- If you’re selling, the practical choice is between a higher price for more effort (private sale) and a fair price with speed and certainty (dealer purchase or brokerage).
What does hiring out a motorhome actually pay?
Rental platforms advertise average owner earnings in the region of £4,000–£5,000 a year. That figure is gross revenue, not what lands in your account.
Weekly hire rates in the UK typically run from around £300 to £1,200 depending on the vehicle, the season and where you’re based. Daily rates give a clearer picture:
| Vehicle | Typical daily rate |
|---|---|
| Older campervan | £58–£75 |
| Newer 2-berth campervan | £75–£115 |
| Coachbuilt, peak season | £90–£125 |
| A-Class, summer peak | Up to £155 |
Where you end up in those ranges depends on the age and condition of your van, how close you are to a city or airport, how well your listing is photographed, and — more than anything else in the first year — whether you have any reviews yet. New listings without reviews struggle regardless of how good the vehicle is.
The costs that come off the top
Here’s the stack, using a £4,500 gross year as the example:
| Cost | Typical figure |
|---|---|
| Platform commission (10–22%) | £450–£990 |
| Self-drive hire insurance | ~£7/day pay-as-you-go, or an annual policy |
| Annual gas safety check (legally required for hire) | £80–£150 |
| Habitation check | £180–£320 |
| Wear-and-tear and repairs | ~£1,000/yr, more on older vans |
| Damage below the insurance excess | Absorbed by you |
That last line catches people out. Platform hire policies carry much higher excesses than a normal motorhome policy — commonly around £2,000 for mid-value vehicles, against £100–£350 on a standard policy. That’s roughly six to twenty times higher, and it exists because the insurer is covering a pool of drivers it can’t individually assess.
The practical effect: a broken cupboard latch, a cracked shower tray, a scuffed panel — the damage hirers actually cause — nearly always falls below the excess. You pay for it yourself. Do check whether windscreen cover is included, too; some policies exclude it, which matters a great deal on an A-Class.
Net result: most owners land somewhere between £1,500 and £3,500 a year. Higher end if you’ve got a newer van, a good location and strong occupancy. Lower end if the van is older or bookings are thin.
(Platform terms, commission rates and excesses change. Check the current figures directly with any platform before you commit.)
What hiring out does to your resale value
This is the part we’d want to know if we were in your position.
Once your motorhome has been let out commercially, it’s an ex-hire vehicle. That label sticks, and it has consequences:
- Most dealers won’t buy it. Ours is a fairly standard trade position — we don’t purchase ex-hire motorhomes, and we’re not unusual in that. So the “hire it for a few years then sell it to a dealer” plan often doesn’t work.
- Private buyers discount it. Buyers assume harder use by people with no stake in the vehicle, and they’re broadly right. Common hire damage — hinges, latches, upholstery, shower trays — is exactly the sort of wear that makes a van feel tired at viewing.
- Your buyer pool shrinks. Fewer routes to market usually means a lower price and a longer wait.
None of this means hire is a bad idea. It means the resale figure at the end of your hire period will likely be lower than the standard depreciation curve suggests — and any honest calculation needs to account for that.
How depreciation shapes the timing
The rule of thumb you’ll see quoted is around 20% in the first year, then 10–15% a year after that. Applied consistently to a £40,000 motorhome, that gives roughly:
| Age | Approx. retained value |
|---|---|
| 1 year | ~80% (£32,000) |
| 3 years | ~60–65% (£24,000–£26,000) |
| 5 years | ~45–50% (£18,000–£20,000) |
| 10 years | ~25–35% (£10,000–£14,000) |
Two honest caveats. First, that curve is a rule of thumb, not a measurement — it compounds neatly on paper and rarely does in real life. Second, UK motorhome values have held up better than the curve implies since 2020, because new stock was constrained and demand stayed strong. Plenty of five-year-old vans have retained more than half their value.
So treat the curve as a rough shape, not a valuation. If you want a real number for your vehicle, get one or two actual valuations — it takes minutes and beats any table.
What the shape does tell you is that the useful hire window is roughly years one to five or six. In that period the van commands competitive daily rates, maintenance is manageable, and there’s still meaningful resale value left. After that, rates fall, repair bills climb, and you’re hiring out a vehicle that’s worth progressively less at the end of it.
A worked comparison
Take a £40,000 four-berth coachbuilt — an Auto-Trail Tribute on a Fiat Ducato base, say.
Option A — sell at the end of year one. You realise around £32,000. If that sits in a savings account at around 4% for the next two years, you’re at roughly £34,600 by the end of year three, with no management, no risk and no hire wear.
Option B — hire for three years, then sell. Resale at year three would be around £24,000–£26,000 for a privately-owned example — but as an ex-hire van, realistically £20,000–£24,000. Add net hire income of £4,500–£10,500 over the three years, and you land at roughly £24,500–£34,500.
| Total after 3 years | Effort | |
|---|---|---|
| Sell at year 1, save the proceeds | ~£34,600 | None |
| Hire 3 years, then sell | ~£24,500–£34,500 | Three years of active management |
Once you account for the ex-hire discount and the fact that money in hand earns something, the financial case for hire is much closer than it first appears — roughly break-even at best, and only at the top of the income range. It wins clearly only if you achieve high occupancy and have no incidents.
But here’s the fair counter-argument, and it’s the strongest case for hire: if you were keeping the motorhome anyway for your own use, none of the above applies in the same way. You’re paying insurance, storage and servicing regardless. Hire income offsets costs you’re already carrying, and the resale hit is against a sale you weren’t planning. On that basis, even £1,500 a year is a genuine win.
The sell-versus-hire question only really bites if you’d otherwise sell.
The legal side — what’s actually required
There’s a lot of confident but wrong information online about this. Here’s what’s accurate.
Gas safety certificate — legally required. If you let out a motorhome commercially, the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations apply to it as a leisure accommodation vehicle. You need an annual gas safety check by a Gas Safe registered engineer holding the relevant LAV qualification. This is the genuine legal obligation, and it’s the one most articles miss entirely.
MOT and roadworthiness — legally required, as with any vehicle.
Self-drive hire insurance — legally required. Your standard motorhome policy excludes hire. Cover must be in place before the keys change hands, and it can’t be arranged after an incident. This applies even if you’re lending the van to friends or family for money. Your hirer cannot use their own car insurance — a car policy isn’t rated for a vehicle of that size, weight and value, and driving without proper cover risks fines and penalty points.
Habitation check — not legally required, despite what you’ll read elsewhere. There’s no MOT equivalent for the living area. That said, most insurers and hire platforms require an annual check as a condition of cover, manufacturers require it to keep a warranty valid, and it’s sensible anyway. Budget £180–£320.
Fire extinguisher, smoke alarm and CO alarm — not statutory for motorhomes, but effectively mandatory in practice: platforms and insurers require them, and you’d be exposed without them. Fit all three.
Finance and warranty. If the van is on HP or PCP, your lender must approve hire use — letting it out without permission may breach the agreement. Many manufacturer warranties explicitly exclude commercial hire and are voided by it. Check both before you list, not after.
Who’s allowed to drive it
Standard hire criteria: at least 25 years old, full UK licence held for two years or more, no fault claims in five years, no more than six penalty points. A driver who doesn’t meet these usually isn’t covered by the hire policy — which means an uninsured driver in your van.
On licence categories, there’s a detail that matters a lot for our audience. A standard category B licence covers vehicles up to 3,500kg. Anything heavier needs C1, which covers up to 7,500kg. But anyone who passed their test before 1 January 1997 has C1 automatically as a grandfather right — with one catch: it lapses at age 70 unless renewed with a D4 medical. Plenty of motorhome owners assume they still hold C1 and find out at 71 that they don’t. Check the DVLA licence checker for any hirer, and check your own while you’re there.
Tax on hire income
All rental income has to be declared to HMRC. The key points as things stand:
- The trading allowance is £1,000 per tax year. Below that, no reporting needed.
- Above £1,000, you must register for Self Assessment by 5 October following the end of the tax year in which you crossed it.
- Income is taxed at your marginal rate on anything above your personal allowance — not, as sometimes stated, only above the basic rate threshold.
- Once registered, you file annually until HMRC takes you out of Self Assessment. You can ask to be removed if your circumstances change; it isn’t automatic and it isn’t permanent.
Two changes worth knowing about:
- Making Tax Digital for Income Tax started in April 2026 for those with combined self-employment and property income over £50,000, dropping to over £30,000 from April 2027 and over £20,000 from April 2028.
- From 2027/28 the Self Assessment reporting threshold for trading income rises to £3,000. The £1,000 allowance itself isn’t changing — you’d still owe tax above £1,000, but you’d declare it through a simplified online service rather than a full return.
Keep records of every booking, all commission deducted, insurance, servicing, repairs and habitation checks. HMRC’s guidance is at gov.uk/check-additional-income-tax. If your hire income is substantial, talk to an accountant — this article is general guidance, not tax advice.
Platforms, and one important correction
The UK peer-to-peer market has consolidated significantly, and a lot of older articles are out of date on this.
Camptoo’s UK operation ceased and its assets were acquired by Goboony. Goboony and Yescapa merged in 2023 and now sit under one group. So the realistic options today are:
- Camplify — around 10% commission, RAC breakdown included, established UK community.
- Goboony / Yescapa — the largest European operation post-merger, insurance via Riverside Underwriting, higher excesses.
- Quirky Campers — specialist platform for characterful and self-build campervans.
Platform hire handles the marketing, driver vetting, payments, insurance and dispute mediation for you, at 10–22% per booking. Private hire keeps the full booking value but puts all of that on your shoulders — every enquiry, every ID and DVLA check, every insurance confirmation, every 11pm phone call about the heating. If you’re new to this, start with a platform.
So: sell or hire?
Hiring out makes sense if the van is under five years old and in good order, you were keeping it anyway, you’ve got the time and temperament for bookings and handovers, there’s no finance or warranty restriction in the way, and you’re comfortable with £1,500–£3,500 a year rather than the headline figures.
Selling makes more sense if the van is past five or six years old, you need the capital now, reliability is becoming a worry, finance or warranty terms block hire, you’d rather not carry the management burden — or you’d planned to sell anyway and were only considering hire as a way to squeeze a bit more out first. That last one rarely pays off once the ex-hire discount is factored in.
There’s also a third route worth considering: buy a separate vehicle specifically for hire and keep your own motorhome out of it. That protects the van you actually care about and keeps income and personal use as separate things.
Whatever you decide, base it on real numbers for your vehicle rather than the averages in any article — including this one.
If you decide to sell: your options
| Route | Price | Speed | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Private sale | Highest | Weeks to months | High — listing, viewings, negotiation, scam enquiries |
| Dealer part-exchange | Lowest | Fast | Minimal — but only if you’re buying |
| Dealer direct purchase | Fair market | Days | Minimal |
| Brokerage | Higher than direct purchase | Weeks | Minimal |
| Auction | Uncertain | Fast | Low — but buyer’s premium eats into proceeds |
Whichever you choose, get more than one valuation. The spread between quotes can be significant and a second opinion costs you nothing.
Presentation matters more than most sellers expect. A clean van with a full service history, dated habitation certificates and a tidy MOT record will consistently beat an identical vehicle with gaps in its paperwork. And the buying season broadly mirrors the touring season — roughly April to September is when you’ll get the strongest interest.
How Oaktree can help
We offer two routes for private sellers.
We buy motorhomes outright. Payment by secure bank transfer, free collection from your home anywhere in the UK, existing finance settled, and completion within 24 hours on accepted vehicles. Our buying criteria are 2010 or newer for A-Class and coachbuilt motorhomes, 2007 or newer for van conversions, or any age if you originally bought the vehicle from us. The van needs to be in good condition, and we don’t buy ex-hire, left-hand-drive or DIY self-builds.
We also offer fixed-fee brokerage. We collect from anywhere in the UK, store the vehicle at our Nottingham site, and prepare it properly — cleaning, servicing and MOT — before retailing it. Brokerage vehicles carry the same three-year warranty we offer on our own stock, and we handle any outstanding finance. You wait a little longer, but you typically see a higher return than a direct sale.
Direct purchase is the quicker, simpler route if you need the money now. Brokerage suits owners who can wait for the right buyer. Send us your vehicle details and we’ll tell you honestly which one fits — and what we think it’s worth.
Get a valuation for your motorhome →
Common questions
Do I pay tax if I hire out my motorhome? Yes. Income above the £1,000 trading allowance must be declared. Register for Self Assessment by 5 October following the end of the tax year in which you exceed it. Tax is charged at your marginal rate on income above your personal allowance.
Will hiring out my motorhome affect what I can sell it for? Yes, and this is the point most owners underestimate. An ex-hire motorhome has a smaller buyer pool — most dealers, including us, won’t buy ex-hire stock — and private buyers typically discount it. Factor that into any calculation before you list your van for hire.
Can I hire out a motorhome that’s still on finance? Not without your lender’s written permission. Commercial hire may breach the agreement. If permission is refused, your options are to settle the finance early or sell. We can settle outstanding finance in full on an accepted purchase, and our brokerage service handles it too.
Do I need a habitation check to hire my motorhome out? Not legally — there’s no statutory requirement. But your insurer or platform will almost certainly insist on one, and a manufacturer warranty usually requires it. What is legally required is an annual gas safety certificate from a Gas Safe registered engineer with the LAV qualification.
How much deposit should I take from a hirer? £500–£1,000 is standard for private hire, collected as cleared funds before handover — an authorisation on a card isn’t enough. Photograph the vehicle inside and out before and after every hire, and never release the deposit before you’ve completed the return inspection.
Does hiring through a platform affect my no-claims bonus? Generally no. Where the hirer is the insured party under the platform’s own policy, claims sit against that policy rather than your personal cover. Confirm this with the specific platform, as terms vary.