How to sell a campervan without the Facebook Marketplace time-wasters - Simon's VW Transporter T5.1

The van itself is the kind that rewards an honest advert. It started life as a VW Shuttle and came to Simon already ply-lined, sound-proofed, carpeted and insulated, with a wooden floor and ceiling. In January 2025 he added his own conversion, built for how he actually used it: a single bed frame with three large under-bed cupboards and a rear hatch for ramps and hook-up cable, a fold-out extension that drops onto the single to make a full double, a kitchen unit housing the pots and pans with a gas burner on top and two fold-out tables, and rechargeable sensor-operated strip lights he preferred to the original LEDs.

Crucially, he described it for what it was. The conversion was his own work, and the whole thing could be lifted out to leave a first-rate base vehicle for someone with different plans - a genuine selling point to the right buyer, and one he made sure the advert said out loud. The mechanical record backed him up: a new clutch, flywheel, engine mounts and a genuine VW EGR in November 2024, a new windscreen in October 2025, brakes, four tyres and a tow bar in August 2024, and every minor from the last MOT cleared in February 2026.

One fault was declared from day one and never quietly dropped: the cab air conditioning needed recharging. It went into the advert as plainly as that, and when a buyer later asked about it, the answer he got was Simon's own - that he never used the air conditioning, would not be recharging it, and that the most basic recharge runs around £70. It is not a glamorous way to answer a question. It is the way that keeps a deal standing up on collection day.

The arithmetic behind a Motorhome Pig advert is deliberately simple: the price on the advert is the seller's return plus our fixed fee. Simon wanted £8,000; his van sat in the up-to-£10,000 band, where the fee is a flat £1,500; so it was advertised at £9,500. That relationship was on his screen before he signed, in the brokerage agreement he signed on 29 July, and it never moved.

What made the difference later was that he had been unambiguous about the floor. He was not saying “I'd like eight” and hoping. He was saying that below £8,000 the sale stopped being worth the bother, and he repeated it to Woody, his main contact, in the plainest possible terms. When the low offers arrived, nobody had to guess what he meant.

Neither decision was difficult once the numbers were put the right way round. £8,800 would have left Simon £7,300. £8,000 would have left him £6,500. Against a stated floor of £8,000, both were out, and he said so without hesitation on the phone to Woody the next morning.

The second buyer's questions were the more interesting part of that call. He wanted to know about the cam belt - it had been done in 2021, and Woody went to the paperwork and came back with the mileage at the time: 99,136, so about 25,000 miles ago, and not due again. And he wanted to know whether the air conditioning fault hid a leak. The honest answer, straight from Simon, was that he had simply never used the air conditioning, was not going to spend money recharging it to sell the van, and that a basic recharge is around £70 anyway. All of it went back to the buyer as it was.

The address is the part sellers worry about, and rightly. It is never on the advert. It is not released when a viewing is requested, and it is not released when a viewing is accepted. The buyer is called, verified, and has to read back a unique PIN for that appointment before the location is shared - and only then does the seller get a text saying, in as many words, that this is the green light to get the van ready. Simon got his at 11:13 on the morning of 5 August. Before that point, the standing instruction is the opposite: don't prepare anything yet.

He also did something practical in the gap. He had a second, unrelated appointment booked for the same Wednesday afternoon, and before cancelling it he texted to ask whether the buyer had actually committed - a completely fair question from someone who had spent the previous fortnight hearing about no-shows. Woody rang him back that morning to confirm it was going ahead before he cancelled anything. Simon then offered to collect the buyer from the local station in the van itself if he was coming by train, and noted that there was three-quarters of a tank in it so he would get home comfortably.

Four days from live to a full-price offer accepted is fast - the median across Motorhome Pig sales is around 36 days - and we would rather say why than pretend it is typical. The van was priced sensibly against its own market rather than against hope. It was genuinely well kept, with receipts to prove it. The advert was unusually thorough because the seller wrote most of it. The known fault was disclosed rather than discovered. And the seller was clear about his floor early enough for it to be defended rather than discovered mid-negotiation.

What Simon actually bought, though, was not speed. It was distance. He never answered an “is it still available?” message, never had a stranger on his drive looking for a discount, and met precisely one buyer - the one who had already agreed to pay him what he asked.