To buy or not to buy.

2012 193. See such a wide extreme in positive and negative reviews. Is it wise at this time?

A little more information would be helpful for us to provide you with comments. What is your intended type of camping? How long do you plan to keep it? What do you tow with?

If you mean should you buy a 2021 rpod 193 right now when prices are high? Travel trailers aren't investments, they are intended to be used for personal enjoyment, so that is entirely a personal decision. If you have the money and want to enjoy the coming camping season why not? If you aren't going to do much camping in the near term and want to wait and see if prices drop them do that.

As for quality all these mass market trailers are built to minimize cost,and all of them use similar appliances. They need maintenance and inspections, and they need to be used as intended. They are not for off road use although with care they can handle unpaved well graded roads.

A 2021 is new enough that it shouldn't have a lot of issues from deferred maintenance, but even so, you should inspect it thoroughly. Look especially for water damage and leaks, pretty much everything else can be fixed but water can destroy a travel trailer in short order.

There are certainly trailers built to last longer that rpods, the two piece fiberglass trailers being one such. But those also cost much more. Again, your choice.    

Yeah, there are always quality and workmanship issues with these trailers targeted at the lower/mid level market. I'm not sure the folks that have bought new in the last year or so are seeing more of this or not. Mostly annoying and cosmetic rather thah seriously compromising function I think, but some of our newer forum members might want to chime in.

The frames and axles of rpods have had some problems. They are, shall we generously say, not built with a lot of safety margin. All that is fixable with reinforcement and controllable if you avoid rough roads and excess load.

Floors are sandwich construction using foam glued between a couple of plywood layers. The walls rest on the edges of these with the frame rails inboard so there is a tendency for sag to occur there. Many members have added outriggers that carry that load back to the frame. Forest River even sells the outriggers so that tells you something.

There are also folks who have had sagging in the middle of their floors where there isnt much support. Usually happens after long use standing in those spots. But again, all pretty easily correctable with reinforcement under the trailer.

Water intrusion as you are already aware can make a trailer junk in no time. That wood and foam floor in particular can't handle being wet, and it's extremely difficult to get in there and fix that. Be vigilant in keeping water out, parking it under cover if possible, and you'll be ok.

Re fuel costs farming, it's not really a problem for me. I'm retired doing hobby farming only and my old Ford tractor at typical load uses 1 to 2 gallons of diesel per hour. So if I bought more than 40 or 50 gallons a year of diesel I'd be surprised.

I've gone all electric for my trimmers, mower, chainsaw, etc, and I heat with wood. I'm a retired solar engineer so will be installing that this year, and I'm on the wait list for a new f150 electric pickup.

So pretty soon the old tractor will be the only fuel burning machine on my place.   I might try running it on veggie oil or biodiesel this summer, and only use dino-diesel in winter a couple of times for plowing snow.

With all home grown energy I won't really care anymore about whos manipulating the global spot market for crude oil. Wouldn't that be nice for a change?