Vanlife Guide: How to Buy a Built Out Campervan

There are about a million articles / YouTube videos / how-to’s focusing on building out your own van but not a lot of information on how to buy a turnkey van. While yes, I wish I would have built out my own van, I simply didn’t have the time to do that since I was supposed to move abroad, borders closed, and I had about a week to figure out where I was going to live since my lease was ending!

There are two main routes to take if you don’t want to do the build yourself: buying a turnkey van and having a van built for you.

If you’re completely new to van life, below is a quick rundown on the common models that people live in since I’ll be referencing them a lot in this post. “Wheelbase” is the distance between the middle of the front tires and the middle of the rear tires and is how all van sizes are typically discussed. Note that the Sprinter body is a bit narrower than the ProMaster so people typically have to setup their beds long ways, or what I call 'hotdog’ (head pointing towards back of van, feet towards front of van) in the Sprinter vs. having it setup ‘hamburger’ (head and feet pointing towards opposite long walls of the van) in the ProMaster.

This website has a much better description of each of the vans, but for just the basics, see below.

Sprinter (made by both Dodge and Mercedes)

• 144”

• 170” regular

• 170” extended (wheelbase is the same but the van itself is about 15 inches longer)

ProMaster (made by Dodge)

• 136”

• 159” regular

• 159” extended (wheelbase is the same but the van itself is about 14 inches longer)

Transit (made by Ford)

• 130”

• 148” regular

• 148” extended (wheelbase is the same but the van itself is about 24 inches longer)

Buying a Turn-key Van

Where does one buy a van to live in? Well, there actually isn’t a great single place to search for all available vans!

Craigslist is where most people post their vans for sale, but as a buyer, Craigslist doesn’t allow you to search the entire country. To get around this I set up about 10 Craigslist searches & alerts for places that typically have vans for sale (Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, California, Oregon, Montana, etc.) so that whenever a new van was added I got an email immediately! I used search terms “camper van”, “campervan”, “van conversion”, “sprinter”, and “promaster”.

Another great option is Conversion Trader - they have vans from all over the USA/Canada that you can search and have great filters. A lot of vans that I saw posted on Craiglist were also on here so I’m sure people who are selling vans use both of these websites.

Winnebago actually purchases stock new Sprinter vans and completely builds them out with RV-quality appliances / fabrics / electrical. They are VERY expensive for me personally but may be the right fit for others!

Sometimes professional builders also list some of their completed vans for sale on their website - I would suggest searching for buildout companies (see section below) and checking if they have any vans for sale.

Having a Van Built Out

Note that I can’t personally endorse any of these companies since I didn’t work with them in any way, this is just the fruits of my personal research.

I considered this route but ultimately I didn’t choose it because a) it was more expensive than what I wanted to pay and b) there are actually very few van builders that have stock kits available which will allow a mountain bike to be stored under the bed.

Dave & Matt Vans - this is a Colorado-based company that exclusively builds out ProMasters. They have both pre-built kits (much cheaper than a full custom build) that start at $19,500 and include insulation, walls, flooring, bed system, roof van, kitchen setup including water system and fridge, and all electrical including batteries and solar panels. This is the best value I’ve found for a pre-built kit and their design is great as well - very minimal so that you can spice it up however you want. I was VERY close to working with them on the van build, but then I found my current (dream) van and purchased that instead.

Wayfarer Vans - they only work on the 136” and 159” wheelbase ProMasters and the 148” Transit but have pre-built kits that are faster and cheaper than a full custom build.

Sportsmobile - they do general RV conversions but can also do vans. Pricing is totally dependent on what they build out for you and their website seems complicated but they also appear to be quite a professional company so I assume if you could get someone on the phone they could walk you through all the options.

Glampervan - one of the OG van conversion shops and they work on both ProMasters and Sprinters. The builds usually range from $30K - $65K (+ the cost of the van).

VanWorks - located in Fort Collins, CO I actually went in and chatted with their head buildout guy for a couple of hours. I didn’t go this route because I didn’t love the interior look of the vans (very industrial) and it was more than I wanted to spend, but they were extremely knowledgeable.

More and more camper van companies pop up all the time given how many people are interested in this lifestyle, so I’m sure by the time this article is written there will be even more options if you do a quick Google search.

Happy searching!