This is how much $$$ we've made building camper vans

In this video, I'm going to break down exactly how much I've made and how much you potentially could make building and selling camper vans. Hey, what's up guys. Welcome to another video where I'm going to be covering a highly requested video, which is basically covering all the financials of a side business that me and my girlfriend have started doing the past couple of years, which is building vans. So in this video I'm going to cover exactly how much we made from the past two vans that we've built out. I know this isn't the typical video. I put out on my channel that has to do with FPV drones or just camera gear, tech review type stuff, but it's actually become a really big part of our lives the past couple of years. So I thought I'd do a video on it. If you're extremely disappointed right now and all you wanted to see was cool drone shots and stuff. Here's a cool video for you to go check out. But if you are curious about the financials of building vans, then stick around because I also have a really big announcement that I'll be making closer to the end. So as far as building vans, this is kind of something we accidentally got into back when Corona first started. We just like honestly had nothing better to do. And I always wanted to build out my own camper van. So I thought it was like the perfect time. I'm usually super busy with a bunch of different travel and filmmaking projects. But when COVID rolled around, we literally had nothing else to do. So we built a van. We ended up using that van for about a year and right around that time is when the van market absolutely took off. So we decided to sell that one and we made a really solid profit off of it. So that motivated us to go do a second one. One of the coolest parts about building vans is the fact that you can build it and use it for however long you want. You can either sell it right away. Or in our case, we like to build them, live in them, use them, test them out and just take advantage of having a van and then afterwards sell for a super nice profit. When it comes to the actual like financials of building and selling vans, there's not much info on YouTube out there. So I just wanted to break it all down in this video. All right, so let's get into the specific numbers. And if you are interested in sort of the process of building vans, I'm going to talk a little bit about that near the end. So make sure you stick around. The first van we did was a 2016 Promaster 159 and we named her Patricia. Patricia was amazing when we first finished it. I bought the van itself in April of 2019 for about $17,000. And like I said, we had no intention of selling it. We just wanted to build it for ourselves. We spent about two months building out that van. I'd estimate it was anywhere between like 500 and 600 total hours of work put into the van. I could do it a lot faster now and our second one went a lot smoother, but it just takes time to learn all the different things. When you're building a van, you basically throw out your level, throw out all your squares, throw out literally every single tool that you normally need to build something just because vans are not square. It's basically like a shape like this. So every single piece or nearly every single piece has to be custom made on the build itself. I spent an additional $12,000 roughly. If you're doing one today, I would estimate that to be a little low just because the price of materials went nuts. It was kind of interesting. We built our first van almost exactly a year before we built our second one and the prices on things were ridiculous. Like a $30 sheet of plywood on our first one ended up being like 75 on our second van. We finished the van in early July and then took off for about three months straight on the road. Over the course of the next nine months or so, we just parked the van in our friend's driveway in LA and did a bunch of adventures from there. Rent in LA is expensive, but friends with empty driveways are priceless. By the time March, 2021 came around, the van market was absolutely popping off. So I listed it and we got a bunch of interest right off the bat, but I ended up selling it to Nicole's cousin for $55,000 for a total profit of $26,000. And at that point we got to use the van for a full year. At this point, we were hooked. So as soon as that van sold, we started looking for a second project. Coincidentally in April again of 2021, we ended up finding our second van, which was a 2020 Mercedes Sprinter 170 4x4. I have no idea if that's the correct order, but this van was nice. Honestly, one of the biggest things that we didn't have on our first van was four wheel drive and four wheel drive vans are really hard to come by, but we ended up finding one on Facebook marketplace and went up and got it. At this point, the van market was like full steam ahead, but we found a really good deal on a pretty much new one that was already built out for $67,000. The build that the guy did before just was not up to par. So we essentially had to rip everything that he had out and start fresh. The van itself was already more high end. So we knew we had to do the same with the build. The van ended up being our absolute dream van. It would honestly be kind of hard to build a nicer van than that. It had a huge battery system from Battle Born batteries, a shower, hot water, induction cooktop, and so much space. So this build took us about two and a half months on and off. I would estimate we did anywhere from 600 to 700 man hours into it. This one just had a lot more features and we went a little bit nicer on a lot of things. So that's why it took a little bit longer than the first one. The total cost of all the materials in the build ended up being about $20,000, bringing the total cost of that van to $87,000. We finished the van in early August and were able to use it for about seven months. Me and Nicole travel a ton for our jobs. So honestly we just weren't using it enough to justify having such an expensive thing, just sitting around. So we decided to list it. And the final price that we got for Carl is, but first a word from our sponsor, Mercedes-Benz. Just kidding. Mercedes, if you're watching this, which I know you're a hundred percent not, please sponsor us. But I do want a second to announce that we are going to be doing full build videos for this newer van. The videos are going to be posted over on my second channel, which actually has a full van tour of our new van. So if you guys want to go check that out, I'll leave a link right here. So if you do want to see those build videos, just make sure you go check that channel out and subscribe. Link is also down in the description below. So anyways, the final price that we got for Carl was $132,000 for a total profit of $45,000. So that is the breakdown. Now, if you are someone who's interested in building a van, I just have a couple things I want to cover. First off, it is not easy. It's hard work building a van. And there's a lot of things, even if you do have construction experience that you kind of have to learn new, but luckily there are so many videos out there on YouTube. You can check out our build videos when they do come out. And there are just a ton of resources out there that you can learn from, but it is hard and it's really frustrating. And once in a while, you do want to drive the van off a cliff. But if you're someone who can just figure things out, you can learn so much on YouTube. I had a little bit of construction experience before, but like I said, vans are just completely different. And then as far as buying the van, you do need to be pretty patient when finding it, especially in the market today. You just have to be constantly hawking Facebook marketplace, Craigslist. And when you do see a good deal, you just have to kind of go and get it right away. So you need to be ready to buy a van. To sum things up, building and selling camper vans can be an extremely profitable and fun business if you really dedicate yourself to it. As far as another van build for us, we'll see what happens in the future. It's such a fun and creative and rewarding process building and designing something that you're going to live in afterwards. Just the other day, we went and looked at some land in one of the coolest parts of Colorado to potentially build a cabin or a little A-frame on. So it's looking like our next project will just be a little bit less mobile. Anyways, I hope that clears things up for you guys. If you thought this video was interesting and you do want to see the entire build process, go check out my second channel where all of those videos are going to be posted and just make sure you're subscribed if you are interested in seeing more content like this. Thank you guys for watching. I'm going to end this video off with a really cute picture of a penguin. So if you like cute penguins, leave the video a thumbs up if you want, but thank you guys for watching. I really, really appreciate it and I'll see you guys on the next one.