How to Buy a New RV, RV Equipment, and Accessories in New York City
NEW YORK CITY — A new report by RV manufacturers reveals that people have grown weary of the old-fashioned luxury of living in a RV.
“New York City is a big city,” said Jeff Sowards, president of Sowars RV Equipment in Manhattan.
“And we’re seeing a lot of the trend lines for a lot more people to buy a new RV.”
The new report from the American Home & RV Association (AHRA) finds that people in New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Delaware are the most likely to buy new homes and equipment.
New York’s top three markets, all of which have seen the highest growth in new RV sales, are all in the New York metropolitan area, including the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx/Staten Island region.
“In fact, the New Jersey and Connecticut markets are very similar to one another,” said Sowares.
“It’s the Bronx and Staten Island.
The only real difference is that people are buying in the Bronx.
It’s a really good place to start.”
The biggest change in the last five years, however, is that the number of people moving to New York has declined.
The city has seen a drop in the number and percentage of households moving to new homes in the past few years, but it’s still the number one state for new home sales.
“We’ve been doing well, but we’ve also been seeing a drop,” Sowiers said.
“There are some states that are just starting to open up, and we’re not seeing as much of that.”
In New York, new home purchases are up by an average of 25 percent since 2006.
That’s more than double the national average of 9 percent.
But New Yorkers aren’t necessarily looking to buy big homes either.
Most of the new homes sold in New Mexico and Texas in the first half of this year were purchased with a deposit.
The average price for a new home in the city was $1,094, up 5 percent from the first quarter of this century.
In New York state, the average price of a home is $1.8 million.
And in New Hampshire and Vermont, the price of homes is up 6 percent and 7 percent, respectively.
“We’ve seen a real turnaround in the value of homes,” Sows said.
New York has been home to some of the highest population growth in the country.
According to the AHRA report, more than one in three new-home sales in New New York State occurred between 2010 and 2018.
“That’s about 2.4 million new homes purchased,” Sowell said.
New Jersey’s rate of new-homes sales is also up by more than 25 percent, from 1.6 million to 2.2 million.
“Our sales growth has been phenomenal,” SOWs said.
The number of new homes being built in New England is also climbing.
New England home sales are up 24 percent since the third quarter of 2018.
New Hampshire has been on the rise for a few years now.
“The first half was really great,” Soweys said.
But the second half has been pretty great, especially in the suburbs and on the East Coast.
“I would say that’s where the real growth is.”
New York, however is not the only place in the U.S. that is seeing a spike in new home construction.
“When we think of new housing, we think about New York,” Sowa said.
He pointed out that New York was the first state to enact a rental tax in 2008.
“This tax is the one thing that’s kept New York going for the last decade.”
The state has also seen a strong demand for apartments.
“So we’ve seen apartment construction go up and that’s great, but there’s a lot that’s driving it,” Sowed said.
The state is the number-one market for apartments in New America, but that hasn’t always been the case.
In the third and fourth quarters of 2019, the demand for new homes has slowed, according to the report.
New-home construction in New Orleans and Memphis fell for the fourth and fifth quarters of this decade, respectively, but those markets have seen strong demand in recent years.
The housing stock in New California is also starting to come back.
“What we’re really seeing is demand is up in the Bay Area and in California,” Soway said.