RV living on your own property (trailer, motorhome, park, motor)
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For this you would need to either be retired or 'working from home'.
Here is the idea. Own a piece of property which has its own well and perhaps electric service. Buy an RV and live in it on your own property for most of the year. Then from time to time drive the RV to vacation campgrounds where you stay for a couple of weeks or a month at a time for a change of scenery/pace.
But here are the questions. While you live on your own property, do you need permits from your county to do that? I am assuming there is no septic system and you would need to pump out the waste tank with a certain frequency. Are there specific rules/regulations about this? Can you stay have a service pump out your waste like they do for porta potties, or do you have to drive to waste facilities?
I was also wondering if you can hire drivers to move the RV for you. They would drive to the vacation or rental site while you drove your car there.
Just think up some possibilities. I have never owned an RV before but it looks interesting.
The need for permits and such depends on the county and state you live in and that information can be found at the local zoning department for your property.
If....... If there are no restrictions...
As long as you have an up to date tag on your RV/motorhome it should be like parking your car/truck on your lot. No property taxes like a house.
You can find lots w/ hooks ups all ready in place ie water, electric, sewer which would make living in your RV a lot easier. The maintenance and upkeep on a motorhome will be more than a pull behind camper or 5th wheel. Both of these will need a fairly good size truck either a 3/4 or 1 ton unless you get a smaller pull behind. Stopping a heavy trailer behind today's lite automobiles is not something you want to experience.
Do yourself a favor and talk with some RV owners. You can find them at any RV park and most if not all will glad to show and tell of their travels and experiences.
The winter camping/living in and RV is totally different than house living. The heating system, cook stove and water heater all run off of propane. In a very cold climate you will run thru lots of propane trying to heat some of these cheaply made RV's.
Learn as much as you can BEFORE you made your choice. Not only on these RV's but everything in your future...
Best of luck
PS... yes, there are lots of RV driver delivery services available........
Location: Approximately 50 miles from Missoula MT/38 yrs full time after 4 yrs part time
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It's my understanding that as already been mentioned, the laws and statutes vary from state to state and county to county.....and local covenents may also have certain restrictions.
Where I live in Ravalli County, MT., you can have a trailer and or an RV on your property for up to 12 months. This is what we did when we moved to MT, having bought our land 4 years earlier.
Moved a 40 foot trailer onto our land, had our well dug and I put our septic system in, had power and phone line brought in, (so I could have my horse on the place) had the property fenced with smooth wire and then lived in the trailer for 12 months while I built our home and my late wife worked at a local Doctors office 12 miles away in the closest town where we has a P.O. Box. We lived in the 40 foot trailer for almost 12 months and this arrangement worked out quite well.
I would think that a visit to the County Court House where you have intentions of buying property and utilizing an RV for housing, should get answers to all your questions.
Yes, there are for hire drivers that will drive or relocate your RV for you. Often, RVs are delivered to dealers using for hire drivers, not manufacturer employees. Rates vary of course and you'll want to make sure all insurances and things like that are in order in case of damage, collision or other cause of loss.
Get your ducks lined up for water, sewer and power. Solar can easily provide enough electricity if you set it up right. Done properly it can all be self contained except for routine dumping of black water and getting fresh water. Depending on the location, gray water can be used for watering whatever grows on the property.
Check zoning. In many cases you can live in an RV while a permanent residence is being built to include planning. That can take a long time so depending on how long you want to do this, that might be a way to go about it. Extensions to build permits are not uncommon so it is possible it could be two years or more. Show some progress, part of a fence here and there, a retaining wall , slow boat footers the first of which must be so you can lower your RV jacks to make leveling easy. The driveway and things like that all take considerable time. Two years and maybe more shouldn't be too hard to arrange unless it is a vacant lot downtown someplace.
It appears you want to live on a piece of property full time with no plans to develop the property in the future....you will find that much of the country will not allow that due to the local zoning laws. Even if you do find a piece of property that will allow long term placement of an rv you will still have to hook up to the grid as for as water, electric and sewer....an rv's biggest drawback is gray water...most rvs have fairly small holding tanks so you will find without a permanent sewer system on your property you will have to move your rv every few days and find a dump station at a campground etc to dump your black and gray tanks.......if you are looking for a place just to boondock then you have many areas in the southwest where you can buy a permit and stay for up to 7 months....again these areas do not have anything...no electricity, no water or dump stations....you can Google areas like "Slab City" to learn about these communities if you want to camp with others or you can find areas where you will pretty much be on your own...
Even if you do find a piece of property that will allow long term placement of an rv you will still have to hook up to the grid.
While it very rare to find a place that allows such a thing. Depending me where it is, there might not be any grid to tie into. There is a lot of rural land that is a long way from any services. People who live in houses in these areas are not tied into the grid.
The only way I see being able to do this type of RV living is on the sly, in a very rural area.
If your interested in doing this look into vandwelling, tiny house living, etc there's a ton of resources out there and they can tell you about rules and how to skirt around them. Basically this is illegal or against city ordinances typically unless your in a very rural area of of any main thoroughways where people can see you. YOu generally can only stay in a house on wheels for a matter of weeks. YOur kind of always gonna be in a grey area doing this. I think best area would be unincorporated neighborhoods outside city limits or not part of city. Technically they still gotta follow county rules but I always see rv's parked in peoples backyard and there's nobody to really say anything
If you don't mind living so far out that it takes an hour to get to a doctor or shopping, you might be able to get electricity to your property without building/buying a home. However, if you want to live in a convenient location, you will not find a property that you can park your rv to live and be able to have electric and sewer connections of any kind. I have been looking for this kind of property for the past 4 years, throughout the southern half of the U.S. Sometimes you can find a place like the one in Lillian, AL, where they sell rv and mobile home lots. I went to look at those and found most of the place to be a junk yard. Upscale rv lots are so expensive and restrictive they do not appeal to me. I have decided to go along with the rules and build a very small cottage.
Location makes a huge difference. Where I live, my neighbor was told he could not stay in a camp trailer that was parked on one of my lots next to a small house he was repairing, which is also on my lot. The neighbor lady who owns a house across the street called code enforcement on him. She also told them I was letting him live rent free in the small house as he was fixing it up. A state inspector came to my door and started asking questions about what was going on in my rental house. I asked him "who wanted to know", he looked at me funny and gave me his business card. I pointed at the street and said "right now you are standing on private property", "what goes on down at that house is none of your business", He started talking and I interrupted him and told him I knew the laws and I wasn't doing anything illegal, and that I wouldn't discuss it with him. He left, and I never heard any more from him. A county inspector stopped by the small rental house a few days later and asked my neighbor if he was repairing the house for free rent, he was told no, that no money had exchanged hands. That was the end of it, but my neighbor stopped spending the night in the camp trailer and stayed in the house. This whole thing kind of irritated me, since I'm the one paying taxes on this property. I learned if you don't talk to any of these government officials, you are better off. It is best to read all the ordinances that may affect your property before you do anything that resembles building. My neighbor is staying in that small rental house as he is fixing it up, and I'm not charging him any rent. If the county and state continues to ignore this, I will consider myself lucky because I think there is an ordinance against not charging for rent.
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