Right now I have 5 RV park deals on my desk, and every single one is teaching me something about RV park investing.
A three park portfolio in Florida, one motorcoach resort and two long term parks. A waterfront destination park in Oklahoma. And a river property in North Carolina with an equestrian vibe, acres of trails, and a guest experience that is genuinely hard to put a cap rate on.
All three are in active underwriting at different stages. All three have shown me something different this month. And all three have reminded me why RV park investing is one of the best opportunities in commercial real estate right now, and also one of the most misunderstood asset classes I have worked in.
Here is what I want to say before we go any further. RV park investing is not passive income. I know that is not what you read on most investing blogs, and I know the pitch sounds great: land, cash flow, outdoor recreation tailwinds, and a fragmented market full of mom and pop operators who have not raised rates in ten years. All of that is true. But so is this: RV parks are businesses, not mailbox money, and the investors who treat them like mailbox money are the ones who call me six months after closing wondering why the numbers do not look like the offering memorandum.
I just talked to a seller who took over a park using creative financing with no payments due for twelve months. The plan was to come in, make updates, add amenities, and get the park running the way they envisioned it. Six months in, they have barely made a dent in the construction list, and they have not done a single thing on the marketing side. Their reasoning? They do not want guests to be disappointed by the noise and the unfinished state of the property.
I understand the instinct, but here is the reality: they now have six months left before payments kick in, no revenue coming in to cover what is coming, and no pipeline of guests being built. That is not a renovation strategy. That is a countdown clock. RV park investing rewards owners who treat it like the business it is from day one, not from the day they feel ready.
I built my last company working fourteen hour days. I am not scared of hard work and I love the entrepreneur life. But I want you to go into RV park investing with eyes wide open, because the upside is very real, and so is the work required to capture it.
Now let me tell you what my desk looks like this week.
RV park investing is not one asset class, it is actually several
One of the biggest mistakes I see buyers make in RV park investing is assuming all parks underwrite the same way. They do not, and the three deals I am working right now make that point better than anything I could say in theory.
The Florida portfolio is the clearest example. One motorcoach resort and two long term parks, all under the same ownership, all in the same general market, and all three are completely different animals financially. The motorcoach resort runs premium nightly rates, attracts a higher income traveler, and lives and dies by its amenity stack and online reputation. The two long term parks run on monthly site rent, have lower per site revenue, and operate more like a mobile home park than a traditional campground. Same seller. Same state. Completely different underwriting. This is one of the most important things to understand about RV park investing before you ever make an offer.
The Oklahoma waterfront park is a destination play. Location is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there, and the questions I am asking are about durability, what holds this park together when the peak season ends and what the off season expense structure actually looks like. Every destination park in RV park investing has a version of this question hiding underneath the surface numbers.
The North Carolina river property is something else entirely. Equestrian trail access, acreage, a lifestyle amenity that you genuinely cannot replicate. The question there is not whether guests love it, they do, it is whether the financial infrastructure exists to support what it is trying to be. That is a different kind of red flag in RV park investing, not fraud, not deception, just a gap between the experience the park delivers and the systems behind it.
Each of these deals requires a completely different underwriting lens. If you want to go deeper on how to think through deal types before you make an offer, my RV Park Resource Library has a growing list of posts on acquisition analysis, due diligence, and financial modeling, and it grows daily.
Gross income is not the whole story in RV park investing
One of the Florida sellers sent me her financials early in the process. Software reports, a T-12, and P&Ls. Clean presentation. Organized. On the surface it looked like exactly what I needed.
I asked for the occupancy reports from her reservation software.
She said she already gave me all the income.
I explained that I did not need the income number. I needed to know how it was earned.
It took a full week to get those reports. A week of back and forth, explaining that gross income alone does not tell me whether revenue came from 80% occupancy at market rates, or 40% occupancy at premium rates, or a handful of long term tenants subsidizing a park that transient guests are not actually choosing. Those are three completely different businesses with three completely different risk profiles, and they can all produce the same gross income number on a P&L.
This is not a knock on the seller. She was not hiding anything. She genuinely did not understand why the number was not enough. But that gap, between what income looks like on paper and how it was actually earned, is where deals get mispriced in RV park investing, and where buyers who skip this step get hurt.
If you want to see what happens when a buyer accepts income at face value without rebuilding the revenue picture, I wrote about exactly that in The $312,000 Mistake. It happens more than you think.
Revenue mix is the most underrated number in RV park investing
Once you have the occupancy data, the next question in RV park investing is what is driving the revenue and whether that revenue is durable.
A park with 70% long term tenants looks stable on paper. Monthly site rent, predictable cash flow, low turnover. But long term tenants also cap your upside, limit your ability to raise rates quickly, and in some cases represent a cultural dynamic that is genuinely hard to change after closing. Buyers who underwrite long term parks at transient rates are making a serious error in RV park investing, and I see it more often than I should.
A park that is 80% transient looks exciting on paper. Nightly rates, strong average daily rate, flexible pricing. But transient revenue is seasonal, weather dependent, OTA dependent in some cases, and requires active management of reservations, marketing, and guest experience. That is not passive. That is hospitality.
Understanding your revenue mix before you close is not optional in RV park investing. It is the difference between buying what you think you are buying and buying something that only looks like it on the surface. For more on how to pressure test the revenue picture before you make an offer, Buying a Mom and Pop RV Park: 7 Hidden Risks That Destroy First Year Cash Flow is worth reading next.
Seasonality is a cash flow problem, not just a calendar problem
Every buyer in RV park investing knows parks can be seasonal. What fewer buyers model correctly is what seasonality actually does to cash flow over a twelve month period, and that gap is where first year owners get into real trouble.
Here is a simplified version of what I look at. Say a park generates $1,200,000 in annual revenue. Sounds solid. But if 70% of that revenue ($840,000) comes in five months and the other 30% ($360,000) comes in seven months, the cash flow picture looks completely different from the annual number. Fixed costs like debt service, insurance, property taxes, and minimum staffing do not take the winter off. They run all twelve months.
A park with $1,200,000 in annual revenue and $780,000 in annual fixed costs including debt service looks fine on an annual DSCR. But if $65,000 of those fixed costs hit in January and revenue that month is only $28,000, you have a liquidity problem, not a profitability problem. Those are different issues with different solutions, and most buyers I work with in RV park investing never model the monthly cash flow picture before closing.
The North Carolina equestrian property I am looking at right now has this exact dynamic. Beautiful park, loyal guests, strong reviews. The monthly cash flow model is where the real conversation starts. For more on how to run this kind of stress test, How to Calculate Break-Even for Your RV Park walks through the math step by step.
RV park investing is a great opportunity if you treat it like a business
I said it at the top and I will say it again. RV park investing is one of the best opportunities in the market right now. The fundamentals are genuinely strong: fragmented ownership, under-managed assets, a growing base of RV owners and outdoor recreation enthusiasts, and a financing environment where a lender who does these loans every day can structure an acquisition that works for your specific deal. The RVIA publishes current data on RV shipments and industry growth that is worth bookmarking if you want the macro picture.
But the investors who win in RV park investing are the ones who go in understanding that they are buying a business, not a check. The parks that perform are the ones with owners who are engaged, financially literate, and willing to do the work of running a hospitality operation with real estate underneath it.
I built a company working fourteen hour days. I am not telling you that to brag. I am telling you because I want you to know that when I say RV park investing requires real work, I am not trying to scare you off. I am trying to set you up for success. The upside is absolutely there. So is the work. And if you go in knowing both of those things, you are already ahead of most buyers I see in this market.
If you want help understanding what a deal actually looks like financially before you make an offer, deal screening starts at just $99 and a full acquisition underwrite is priced depending on complexity. Reach out at PVIFinancial.com.
Related reading:
- RV Park Due Diligence Red Flags: 5 Financial Lies RV Park Sellers Don’t Want You to Find
- SBA Loan for RV Park: 7 Critical Things Every Buyer Must Know Before Applying
- RV Park Return on Investment: 5 Dangerous Mistakes That Destroy Your Returns Before You Close
- What a Lender Actually Looks at Before Approving an RV Park Loan
For the full acquisition framework in one place, my book From Offer to Operation: The Complete RV Park Investor’s Guide is available for immediate download Here at Gumroad or by searching the title on Amazon.
Check out the RV Park Resource Library for the full list of posts, updated daily.
~Wendi | Fractional CFO | PVIFinancial.com
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