# Buying an RV Park or Campground

What RV parks and campgrounds trade for, how the site mix and season shape earnings, and what the water, sewer and power cost to put right.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/guides/buying-an-rv-park-or-campground
Last checked: 2026-08-08

## Outdoor Hospitality's Owner-Operator Asset

RV parks and campgrounds are the same trade at two temperatures: pads, hookups, and a season, earned on land the owner controls. Demand has run strong since 2020 and the institutional money noticed, which is why [cap rates](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/cap-rate) compressed at the premium end while the long tail of family-run parks still trades on [owner-operator](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/owner-operator) terms. The [valuation](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/valuation) sources treat parks and campgrounds as one lane, and so does this guide: the differences live in the site mix and the season, not the model. The prize is a park with full-hookup depth, a real season, and infrastructure that passes inspection; the trap is a pretty property whose septic, power, and permits cannot carry the plan.

## What Parks Trade For

Sold campgrounds and RV parks average a 3.07x earnings multiple on the publisher's own travel table, which is what a single park changes hands at. Institutional reporting prices a different market: better-quality parks near an 8% capitalization rate and average product near 9%, resort-grade assets compressing and value-add widening, and the 7x to 11x earnings figures in circulation belong to that end rather than to single-park sales. Per-site rules of thumb from brokers run roughly $10,000 to $30,000 depending on hookups and market. When the lenses diverge, the infrastructure and the records usually explain which one is lying.

## The Season, the Mix, and the Long-Stay Question

Three structural reads shape the earnings. The season first: a hundred-day mountain summer and a year-round Sun Belt park are different businesses at the same site count, so read revenue by month and the shoulder seasons' real contribution. The mix second: full-hookup share, pull-through pads, big-rig capacity, tent sites, and cabins each carry their own rate, occupancy, and labor. The long-stay question third: monthly guests smooth cash flow and cut turnover cost, but a park drifting toward permanent residency changes its regulatory footing and its exit buyers, so know the mix you are buying and the one you intend to run. Booking data from the park's own system beats every summary the listing offers.

## Infrastructure Is the Diligence

The [physical plant](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/physical-plant) decides more park deals than the P&L does. Septic capacity and condition, well or municipal water, the electrical pedestals' amperage and age, roads, and drainage are the asset's real load-bearing members, and each carries permits whose transferability and current compliance are checkable facts, not assumptions. Utility structure matters the same way it does in manufactured housing: parks on municipal water and sewer carry tighter pricing than private-utility parks, whose systems are the owner's to maintain, permit, and eventually replace. Price the upgrade plan honestly, trenching, septic expansion, and pedestal upgrades are six-figure work, and the permits to add sites are never guaranteed.

## What to Verify in Diligence

The record to assemble before the offer holds:

## Financeability Notes

Parks finance on the real-estate-plus-operations pattern: SBA 504 for the property, [7(a)](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/sba-7a) for the [going concern](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/going-concern), and conventional park lenders competing at the stabilized end. The record question is decisive here, the trade's own guidance says a park without three years of statements and occupancy data is a speculative project that often cannot be bank-financed at all, so the books are not a formality but the loan's foundation. Lenders read the season the way this guide does and structure [working capital](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/working-capital) for the off-season; private utilities bring inspections into underwriting. Model debt service on the off-season's cash flow, net of the wages the season actually requires, and let the infrastructure report size the reserve.

## What this guide verified

- County Business Patterns counts 5,018 RV park and campground establishments with paid employees and 26,333 workers as of 2023, around five per park. That staffing shape says the asset mostly runs itself between seasons, and the buyer is pricing land, sites, and a reservation book. (Census County Business Patterns, RV parks and campgrounds (2023): https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html)
- No federal series publishes a value per site, so the per-site rules of thumb in circulation rest on nobody's data. What is published is the size of a park: 4,889 RV park and campground establishments took $4.25 billion of receipts in 2022, about $869,000 each, and the 2023 survey puts the industry at $4.78 billion of revenue against $1.0 billion of payroll. Size the income before the sites. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census and 2023 Annual Integrated Economic Survey (NAICS 721211): https://data.census.gov/table/ECNBASIC2022.EC2272BASIC?n=721211)
- County Business Patterns puts the trade's total annual payroll at about $1.0 billion across those 5,018 parks, which works out at roughly $203,000 a park and about $38,650 a worker. That is a seasonal hourly wage bill rather than a salaried one, and the line the owner's own labor is quietly netted against. (Census County Business Patterns, payroll for RV parks and campgrounds (2023): https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html)

## Terms of the trade

- **Shoulder season**: The weeks on either side of the peak, which decide whether the year clears its costs. Peak weeks sell themselves and the shoulder decides the year, because staff, utilities and debt service run in months the campground may be nearly empty. It is also the part a new owner can move, with events, longer-stay rates or a season that opens two weeks earlier. Ask for occupancy by week for two years and read the shoulder as the business, with the peak as the thing that pays for it.
- **Full hookup**: A site with water, sewer, and electric at the pad, the trade's premium product. The hookup stack is the park's product ladder: full-hookup pads rent for more, stay occupied longer, and carry the long-stay demand that smooths a season, while dry sites sell weekends. The share of sites at full hookup, and the amperage at the pedestal, decide which travelers a park can serve at all, so the site mix is the first read on any listing. Upgrading it is the classic value-add plan, whose cost lives in trenches, septic capacity, and permits.
- **Site mix**: The park's inventory by type: RV pads by hookup level, tent sites, and cabins. Two parks with equal site counts can be different businesses: one rents full-hookup pads to monthly guests all season, the other sells tent weekends and turns over constantly. The mix decides revenue per site, labor per guest, and how weather-fragile the year is. Read occupancy and rate by site type rather than blended, and weigh cabins separately, since they earn hotel-like rates but carry housekeeping, furnishing, and replacement costs the pads never do.
- **Seasonal site contracts**: Sites let for a whole season or year, paid ahead, at a lower rate than a nightly stay. They are the cash flow that gets a park through the winter and the ceiling on what it can earn in July, because a seasonal site cannot be sold twice. A park that is ninety percent seasonal is closer to a land lease than to hospitality, with lower revenue per site and far less work. Ask for the split, the renewal rate, and what a transient night would have earned on those same sites at peak, because that difference is the value-add case and the reason the seller has not taken it.
- **Stay-length tier**: How long a guest has been on the site, which decides what it takes to remove them. California writes three tiers into one chapter. Thirty days or less and the guest is an occupant, removable on seventy-two hours' written notice with the vehicle taken to secured storage. Past thirty consecutive days they are a tenant, owed a three-day notice to pay or thirty days for anything else and an ordinary unlawful detainer. Past nine months they are a resident, owed sixty days and a listed reason. Florida presumes an occupancy of more than six months is nontransient and sends it to the residential eviction statute. Ohio goes the other way and excludes recreational vehicle parks from its landlord-tenant act, but only where the circumstances indicate a transient occupancy, so a long stay there can still land inside it. Read the site roster by arrival date before pricing the seasonal revenue.
- **Membership contract impound**: Long-stay contract money a regulator can order held, with the members as its beneficiaries. Where a park sells the use of its ground under contracts running longer than a month, the money can stop being the operator's to spend. Washington registers those contracts and lets the director impound the sale proceeds, the receivables and the dues where future availability and quiet enjoyment are not otherwise assured. Impounded funds sit beyond the reach of lenders, creditors and a trustee in bankruptcy, with the contract purchasers as a class the beneficiary. Assigning or pledging anything inside an impound needs written approval, and a change of owner is itself a reportable event.
- **Design flow**: The gallons a day a park's septic system is permitted for, set by a table. Full hookup is the premium product and this is what the upgrade actually costs. A state table sets the design flow by site type and not by measured use. The numbers do the arithmetic for you: in Minnesota a campsite with a central bathhouse is fifty gallons a day and one with a sewer hookup is a hundred. So converting a dry site to full hookup doubles its design flow, and enough conversions move the whole park up a permit tier. Past five thousand gallons a day it is a midsized system; past ten thousand on one dispersal area it needs a state permit. Two more things a buyer should know. The flow is redetermined for an expansion before the permit issues. And the permit names a person, so it does not follow the land: the buyer asks for a modification and the seller has to consent to it.

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