Investing in RV Parks

Mike Hambright (00:01.166)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with Jason Lafferty. He’s out here in the DFW market with me, but he’s an investor in RV parks. And so we’ve talked, I think I’ve done close to 2,000 podcasts now over the years. And I don’t know if we’ve, it’s been a while since we talked about RV parks, if we ever have. I’m sure it’s come up here and there. So a little bit of a niche, of course the riches are in the niches. So we’re going to learn more about it today. Welcome to the show, Jason. Thanks for having me. Yeah. How’s it going, man? Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So

All about RVs, we were kind of sharing stories about how you got into it and maybe tell us a little bit about your background and kind of what got you into the RV parks, of all the things you could invest in, like what led you there? Sure, yeah, so just a lifelong entrepreneur. Grew up going to lot of campgrounds, KOAs, had a transport company back in the day hauling repoed campers and driving repoed motorhomes and I’ve always had a camper as an adult. So, naturally an enthusiast and then…

bit of real estate background. I was just trying to figure out how to get more and investing with myself and what avenue to get into. So I was coming back from Port Aransas a few years ago and checking out these RV parks we were staying at. And I was like, how do I do this but on a smaller scale just try to get in, a concept, and get rolling? And then I was driving by Lake Whitney and just started seeing little 10 or 20 site parks on the side of the highway and kind of thinking that might be an avenue. So I just started.

Just digging into it, what is the feasibility, where’s the demand, how much does this cost, what type of loan, loan of value do you need, what type of loan products are there for this stuff. And it just turned into an obsession. Yeah, it’s interesting. As an entrepreneur, it’s hard to not see something and always be thinking about how you would do it or how they could do it better. It’s easy to see a lot of things, a lot of real estate things, but even RV parks. Because we stayed at a bunch of RV parks. I told you we had done a couple trips.

Some of them are night and day. It’s like, this is really well run. The Wi-Fi is great, all these things. And some of them are like, this place is a shithole. Yeah, lock your doors. Instead of staying here for a week, let’s just make it a day and move on. But you always think of the business side, too. Obviously, we’ll get into some of this, but are they big enough to have on-site management? Or is it just something you do through an app? And all these things, right? Sure.

Mike Hambright (02:20.589)
Yeah, that’s cool. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are like that. Like you find something you’re passionate about or something that you use yourself and you just kind of say, oh, I need a better solution for that or I have a better way to do that. So that’s cool. you duplicate that? Yeah. I would say a lot of real estate folks, like I’ve said this before, especially on the house side, like the novelty kind of wears off and you’re like, it’s just a business and I’m doing this to support whatever I want to do when I’ve kind of fallen out of love.

houses, you know, because it happens eventually, at least for me. But so let’s talk about like, you know, what I know there’s different classes of RV parks, they’re not all the same. We just kind of talked about that. And so kind of like, you know, we have a bunch of multifamily and we talk about class A properties, class B, C properties, even in real estate, I guess we talk about every area of real estate has different classes. But RV parks are no different, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. So there’s really only like

three different types of parks. You’re either in transit, you know, on your way somewhere else off interstate or something. You’re a community, which is long-term. It’s workforce housing next to a solar farm, power plant, oil, gas, or just construction or something like that. And then a destination. So you’re by a lake, by a river, ocean. You are your own destination or something like that. Yeah. So once you kind of see what that, what it is, then you know how to cater to those people. If they’re monthly, you focus more on your dog park, your wifi, your laundry.

If it’s more short term, you focus more on easy coming in and out, checking in, checking out, and maybe try to have some other amenities if it’s kids, know, extra picnic tables and fire pits and whatnot. But in terms of like class, you can call it class A through almost E. know, obviously the bottom is you’re like, you feel like you need a police escort to get in there. know, the trailer park boys and yeah, that type of stuff all the way to class A is your resort concrete pads.

little fountain with a little pond and resort pool and stuff like that. And then just kind of getting in between, whether it’s affordable housing. Affordable housing could be class B, somewhere in there as well. Yeah. So do most investors focus on one of those kind of use cases or a class? Or do they tend to do anything that makes sense? Or is that something that people would specialize in? I think a lot of everybody.

Mike Hambright (04:47.021)
Parks has their own strategy, but for me, I think it’s just so hyper local. You drop a pin and then five or 10 miles around it, you can go to the Chamber of Commerce to see what’s drawing people that area. And people wanna create something on what they think, but I think it’s more important to create something based off the community and what’s really drawing people in there. Because the only time you’re really gonna change the dynamic of an area is if you have 50 acres and you have some hiking trails and sauna river and a petting zoo and you’re creating a destination. And if not, then you are.

create its outdoor hospitality no matter how you look at it. So you’re trying to create something that’s going to cater to folks that are already going there. Right. Using the features of the land or just complementing your avatar client that’s going to come. Yeah, because we thought we have 104 acres in East Texas. it’s just come up before. I mean, for us, it’s been all expenses and no revenue. We’re like, how do we monetize this thing? Because everything we’ve ever invested in, there’s a monetization strategy. And for this, it’s all expenses. But we’re like, well, we have that whole back half of the property.

We’re like 15 miles from Canton, so they have the trade days. like, oh, we could put a tiny home community on. I don’t really want to manage that. But we’ve thought about it. But it’s off the beaten path for sure. And there’s RV parks. We’re along I-20 in East Texas. And there’s RV parks all along there. It’s like, how are you going to compete with those guys that are driving right past there? We’re like five years, four or five miles off of I-20. How’s anybody going even find You’d have to create something more intimate, something.

just different than your typical park is there 25 to 35 feet away from each other. So maybe something’s got like its own backyard, its own kind of vibe, if you will. Yeah. I don’t think we’re going to do that. But you know, because it’s one of those things where, know, obviously you got everybody’s got an opportunity cost of their time. I certainly do. So but so are a lot of owners is it my hunch is it’s a lot of

owner operators, like a lot of people that buy these things. And I’m sure there’s a lot of big corporate like setups as well. So what’s the kind of layout of who typically runs RV parks? The National Association of Campground Owners, which is OHI now, their big stat has always been about 80 % of parks are mom and pop owned. They’ve owned it for 20 plus years. So if they don’t have a succession plan with family or something, they’re going to be selling anyways. And then parks.

Mike Hambright (07:08.693)
I’ve gotten a little sexy just like anything else since COVID. So you see a lot more private equity and larger groups moving in as well. So to me, parks are like self-storage 20 years ago. Now it’s more systematized. And when you build a subdivision, already have plans for all the self-storage and all that. So it’s definitely a shift. I don’t know. It’s pretty interesting. A lot of the mom and pops are probably people that

had an RV and traveled and the next thing you know they own a park or they stayed in a park and they saw it for sale sign or something. They got to know the owner and I mean a lot of that type of stuff. Retirement plan. Like a little park, little fix and flip park that I bought in West Texas. He bought it as a retirement plan built it in 08 just for a little supplemental income but cash only, no website.

no credit cards whatsoever, you’d call him and then he would drive from down the street, meet you with a little flashlight and ask you how your trip was. And then you pay him cash and go about your way. So we bought it, add some more sites, added a cabin, add some park owned units, because a lot of workers in the area, housing is an issue, and add some marketing. So you see a lot of outdated systems and things you can quickly implement. Yeah.

Yeah, I saw that when we use, I know there’s some, I’m sure this has evolved, it’s been a few years where we use an app.

where you just like, it’s like a hotel, you just book your next, like we’re gonna go from here to there, what’s around there, where we can stay. RV Parky, there’s, RV Parky is the one we use, Yeah, that one’s great forever. And you’re just trying to look at your next location, what availability do they have, but some of them were, you could just tell some of them are much better run than others, know, some of are much better marketers than us, some of don’t market at all, they no idea what they’re doing, but.

Mike Hambright (08:52.631)
Yeah, so we’re talking about kind of existing parks, but what about development? think there’s a lot, just like me, I’ve got some land, maybe I could do this. There’s probably a lot of people that think they can just go build a park, but what are the considerations for kind of development? Well, I’ve built two ground up mid-size ones and a third one’s on its way. I would just say the first thing is whatever kind of timeline for…

making some money on that just double it. That’s like everything. Yeah, yeah, just be safe on your reserves and you know all that.

It’s kind of similar of like we talked about earlier with investors and on what they want to either build or buy and change There is that you we have a piece of land you got to understand What are the features of it like I call it the Houston special where they normally need a retention pond so half the parks over there They’re really successful They have like a two or five acre pond in the middle and they build RV sites around it and those are just gold because You can tell in the Google reviews grandpa’s over there catch release pond and he’s taking pictures with his grandson You know why he’s staying at the park, so you know is there something like that?

you can accent? Is there some way that you can save the trees if it’s heavily treed? Because 80 % of parks don’t have any shade and then 80 % of the time people ask for shade. So what is the feasibility in terms of the land itself and then the local area, know, 5, 10, 15 miles away. What’s bringing people to the area? How are the other parks performing? What are they doing wrong? What can they do better? You know, just kind of really dig into it.

And is it, I guess, you know, it’s like real estate. people, you could buy cheap houses in the hood, or you could buy nice houses in nice areas. So I guess some people probably are attracted to the cheap stuff, cheap land if they want to develop. But those are the ones that are harder. I they probably don’t have as much proximity to something that’s bringing in traffic and things. So you should probably, I mean, how do you look at that? You generally probably.

Mike Hambright (10:45.835)
Like the hardest thing to do is get people to know you’re there if you’re in some far off land. So why not try to be close to something that’s attraction drawing people in if you can.

Yeah, so the quickest, easiest one is look at major metro areas like a magnet. The closer within an hour radius around those, DFW, Austin, or wherever, the closer the better, of course. And see a lot of people, they’re like, well, this land over here is half the cost per acre. And I’m like, if you build 60 sites, you can’t even fill 20 of them, then what are you doing? I would have paid 10 times as much for the land if I could have built 60 sites and stayed full. Or had double the amount that I could charge.

is like in Fort Worth, there’s some parks that charging $1,000 a month. When you get over an hour away, they’re $3.50 to $4.50 a month. And that can really change your dynamic and what you’re trying to build, the cost of building, your whole plan. are there talk about, you mentioned this a little bit ago, people that are permanent residents or maybe for a season or something like that, depending on.

where you’re at. So talk about that that kind of avatar versus the person that’s on a family trip and they’ve got a week or two that they’re gonna go RV around something or around from some area to some area. Like I guess what percentage of the folks that are out there are like more of a permanent resident.

It’s mostly just the area. So once you identify, because you can tell pretty quick, you put a pinpoint where you want to build a park, you just go drive around, look at the other parks, you’ll know. And I think it’s, then you take that little onion layer off and you’d be like, okay, well, who are they? So like my park in Whitney, there’s a power plant and there’s several solar farms. So we’ll definitely cater to them. And so those guys, they’ll get brought in from Kentucky or Idaho or something. And the first thing they do is they go power plant type in

Mike Hambright (12:33.465)
address and they type in RV park near me. So I just focus on Google ads for that because who knows where they’re coming from. And then once you get those phone calls, then you just, I just focus on they just want to come here and work 12 hours a day for the power plant two months and then leave. so what do they want? They want, how do I just get in here, get out cash app, leave me alone. I just check in like they want it simple as possible. So I just keep it as simple as just cater to them. Yeah.

And guess, and how do you know like density wise? know one of the things with, we’ve owned some self storage and I know there’s always this like, sometimes there’s too much supply of self storage. how do you, like some people would say, I don’t wanna be close to a competitor, but if they’re full all the time, you know there’s demand, right? So how do you kind of balance that density of, I guess, demand?

That’s my favorite part about parks because it’s not like apartment complexes where you have all the data in the world. You could just analyze it to death. But parks, it’s more of a judgment. It’s a feeling. It’s a pulse. If I’m looking to go buy a park, I’ll go there, go drive by the other parks and take notes, kind of get an idea for it. But I’ll also go to the cafes and the restaurants just talking to anybody. Like, hey, just go to the city hall. Go to the Chamber of Commerce. And then you can really get a feel. You just start talking about it. You’re like.

Yeah, you really know if they could do this, more people would come. Or if you could build this, you can identify some needs. But if you drive by and there’s 10 parks and half of them are half full, and it’s a monthly park, it’s pretty easy to calculate a monthly park versus a nightly one. Nightly ones, you look on Saturday afternoon, how’s that park performing? Monthly, you can just go there.

all of them are half full, why would I build another one? They’re not full. So I’d have to do something the same price or similar price and a lot better and a lot more expensive to, you don’t want to fight for the bottom dollar. Yeah, a race to the bottom, right? Yeah, it’s never good. So let’s talk about the operations. I think a lot of people are attracted to things like this, and they forget that they actually have to run them. And so I know with like, I’ve done a lot of large multifamily syndications, we typically are looking for stuff that’s 100 plus units

Mike Hambright (14:45.263)
Because you can have on-site management, kind of in departments like under that, you probably can’t get on-site management, and that’s a whole other issue. But I guess at what level can you afford to have on-site management? And then let’s talk some more about the kind of operations, because I think a lot of folks just, it’s not a passive investment, clearly, right? I mean, I don’t think any real estate is really that passive, but yeah.

I would think, you know, depends on what your strategy is. You know, if you were looking for a good investment that you wanted more passive, then you might want to do something to where you can hire a park property management company. That’s why we started one. And that’s at least 60, 70 sites or more. And then it’s, you know, just like an apartment complex, having a property management company is, you know, more hands off. But you can have a very successful smaller park. You know, I think a really good strategy is if you have a smaller park or a newer park is,

is just setting up an agreement with somebody local, say, hey, you can live here for free in exchange for a few hours a week worth of like helping me out, clean the showers until the park really launches or something. So there’s different ways to get creative. You always just work with the community and just kind of see how you can work together. Because there’s plenty of people that like, I can stay there for free and all I got to do is clean showers a few times a week and then tell you when somebody checks in or something or if I need to flip a breaker, they’re like, hell yeah. So it’s great. It’s a win-win and they’re happy to do it and they’re thankful and I’m thankful. Yeah.

Let’s talk about the overall operations of the business. I there’s a lot of moving parts on this, I’m sure. what are some of the things that people tend to, I guess, underestimate that’s required to keep the wheels turning? On the maintenance side?

You know, obviously there’s the grass, having your systems for that, whether you’re going to hire it out or have the equipment there and paint somebody do it. Just having somebody lined up when you have a water leak, having a quick little plan because there’s always going to be a breaker trip or something that’s pretty simple, just already know what’s going to happen. So on the maintenance side, little things like that.

Mike Hambright (16:46.773)
Everybody freaks out when Wi-Fi goes bad. So just having systems to be like something happens You know, how do I reboot it really quick and have somebody that could just go do it so the world doesn’t stop and Operation side it’s just kind of you’ll get a feel for what the common questions are Issues are you know, whether it’s checking in checking out? if it’s if you’re back for electric checking their meters and and and mostly just money collection because everybody

wants to use different apps or can’t do this and that. it’s mostly just crane systems, SOPs, and tailored to each park. Yeah. And some of those things can be done centrally. Like, you own several. If you just own one, it wouldn’t really matter, I guess. But if you have different parks around, you can do the money stuff.

some of the support stuff could probably be done centrally. How do you kind of I mean that’s where some of the efficiencies I guess are to come in and own multiple parks and being an operator versus just somebody that that was their retirement plan. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So you have your own site. You always want to have a good on site person that you can communicate with pretty easily for for the physical things like I have cameras on the park. So often something happens to Wi-Fi. They just have to go there and press the blue button and then hit reset and then cameras are back on. Yeah. So just figuring out what those top 10 checklist things are

going to be then you don’t have to physically drive out there to do that and then delegate that to the on-site person so just getting ready getting ahead of it and then remotely you know like collecting money I usually just text message in cash app

at times and then we’ll obviously use the booking software as well. So yeah. Yeah. So I have a couple more questions on the development side. So what if you develop something from scratch, like what all you have to do? Obviously, you’ve got to run electricity to a bunch of sites. You’ve got a septic system in there. Like what are some of the, I mean, this is probably one of the cheaper things to develop, I would assume, because there’s no, you know, there’s no structure, not a lot of structures. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, water, sewer, electric, get your utilities in.

Mike Hambright (18:47.885)
Sometimes you can get city sewer, which is awesome. But if not, then you’re pretty much cutting in your roads and then deciding in your paths, deciding on if you want to do a mix of gravel, a little step up would be asphalt, and ultimately concrete. So it’s kind of figuring out which.

park or style you want to build and then amenities for sure because you always want a clubhouse. lot of counties are starting to require a certain amount of feed in between the spaces and a certain amount of bathrooms per RV sites and every county is different. So usually you can get like an 18 by 30 clubhouse that has a few showers and a little laundry room and an office. So you’ll count on that. Dog park and whatever kind of amenities that you can make happen with it.

Focus on your Wi-Fi infrastructure for sure. That’s a learning curve. I know when we rented, we’re so addicted to being, as an entrepreneur especially, as long as I can be online, I don’t really care. And we went up to our first stop when we did this first trip in RV. I was like, as long as I can get online, I’ll be fine. We went up to Yellowstone. We stayed right outside of West Yellowstone.

the wifi was so good we were streaming like netflix and watching movies and stuff and i was like i didn’t expect this at all i thought we were going to be like shut off and then of course every park’s a little bit uh… a little bit different but yeah i can see how important that is because honestly

If I didn’t have that, would have been itching to move to the next place. Hopefully it’s better the next place. And there were places that didn’t have Wi-Fi at all, so you never know. Yeah, I think it’s getting a lot better with Starlink for satellite. Because there’s only so much infrastructure that a place could have. Right. Probably a lot of people have their own Starlink if they’re If the internet’s that important to you. I have it out of my ranch. It’s better than the Wi-Fi here at the office or at my home in town.

Mike Hambright (20:32.813)
So yeah, it’s great. Yeah. Yeah. You’re not going to get one gig out of it, but you’re not going to have intermittent issues. Right. It’s consistent. It’s going be. Yeah. And I remember the other issue for me is like, as long as I almost never have to back up, I’ll be fine. Because I hadn’t towed an arm. It was like a 32 foot bumper pull. Oh, yeah. I’d never had to. a great argument starter. I’d never towed anything before. So I always am trying to get a pad that we can pull through. That’s not like I got to pull in and back out. Oh, yeah. And then eventually, it’s like, I

I kept going down a road. This was in Durango, Colorado. And it said dead end road. I like, doesn’t look like it’s going to dead end. It’s going to keep going. And eventually it did dead end. And I had to do a jackknife thing on some road to kind of bottom that thing out. it was a rental. So what is, you talked a little bit about counties. And what are some of the typical like.

How willing are a lot of, mean, so when we built the house out in the country, we didn’t have to get permits, nobody even cared. But let’s talk a little bit about the regulations or stuff that govern these things, whether it’s starting a new one or adding on or whatever, what does that typically look like?

Acquisition is just going and talking to them. I don’t try to skate around anything if you’re buy something It’s like we’re buying one in East Texas and I just went up there and their requirements I was like, so we good we talked about one that’s 24 sites city sewer one add 40 more and We’re just making sure that that they didn’t have any problems with the expansion and so we went over things and with the sewer The sewer guy with the city and I was like sounds like we’re good, you know, the permits $3,000 you guys don’t have any objections

We looked at the waterline. He’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, got to drive out. We got to meet you first I was like so you’re basing your decision and if you like me when you meet me if you’re give me a permit or not I’m like, whatever but I’ll come out there you want to go get some barbecue and talk about it But that’s what they based it off of but I think but you’ll know pretty quickly because I mean they they’ve had these conversations a lot of counties have implemented RV park specific rules a ton the past two or two years that they didn’t have before and so you’ll know like if you look at a map

Mike Hambright (22:47.567)
Hood County around Granbury, it’s great for Airbnbs, market, vacation area, but there’s hardly any RV parks and years ago they put in all these crazy rules, they don’t want them, so you’re not gonna get a permit. So I was looking into a park in Baytown by Houston and they have,

If it’s an RV park, regardless of what you do or how it’s zoned, there’s two layers of approval that has to get through city council. And I talked to him and I was like, if we do everything perfect, we have a fancy resort where the chances you think she’s like, it’s not going to happen. There’s no new parks in five years and I’m not supposed to tell you this, but it’s not going to happen. So I’m like, all right, well, check that one off. We’re not going to go there. But I think you just go there and talk to them. And I always start off with, we’re not building trailer park. We’re trying to do something a little bit nice, not overcharge the community.

something that would be good for the community. And just start with that and then like, and you’ll find out pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah. Is there overall, I know during COVID obviously RVing was kind of hot because people were just like, hey, if I can work remote, I’m going to hit the road. And I think I have a sense because I know because we started looking at RVs and there was no inventory.

few years later, the lots are like packed at the gills. And so I mean, you have these market cycles. Of course, COVID was a weird anomaly that, you know, hopefully we never have to deal with again. But what’s the kind of demand for RV park like slots, I guess, and I guess it’s riding the wave a little bit with the baby boomers as well. mean, what are some kind of things that drive the market cycle? What do say?

Well, as we’re still, I think on the tail end of COVID, because like you touched on, there was a spike, know, dealerships were out of inventory. You know, there was a list to get new RVs. And then after the new war, war off and, you know, a large portion of people, you tried it for a year and you’re like, it’s not for me. And then flooded the market and then, know, the tail end of COVID. So during that time, I mean, you, I can remember one guy, uh, 20, 22 or so, he called 40 parks around Dallas before one.

Mike Hambright (24:57.857)
was open. But now you call and there’s a lot more vacancy.

a wave, you know, you’ll see a lot of more people talking about like, my numbers aren’t worthy at, so now they’re focusing more on marketing because before it was just, you know, we’re just booked up. Who cares? We don’t need to do any marketing. So it’s, it’s, it’s definitely overall needing a more parks generally to keep up with the demand, but you’re starting to see a lot of saturation. Like you’ll see a North Houston and Willis for the next five or 10 years, they’re not allowing any more RV parks. They’re just going to wait and think about later. There’s talks about that around Lake Texoma.

no more RV parks until after that big… They put like Hard Rock, Margaritaville. Margaritaville, that’s a whole bunch of development up there. So you’re starting to some saturation for sure. Like you’re around Canton, that little stretch around Tyler, there’s probably 30 new parks in the past five years. So those are some shifts, but think a savvy investor just getting a little bit more…

in tune with local communities. Half of every small Texas town, it’s hard to find an affordable rental. So if you’re looking for parks like that, wouldn’t be that hard to tap into small mid-sized ones. And as a savvy investor, sometimes the opportunity is just to buy from the unsavvy investors. They’re like, tried it, and like, this sucks. I got to give me. My first couple of rentals that we bought, they were terrible. I just couldn’t get out of those things fast enough. We lost money on them. But there was a big learning lesson.

So I think there’s probably a lot of people that are like, I’m going to, this is part of my retirement. And they don’t realize how active it could be. Or they have somebody that’s, yeah, I’ve got somebody they’re going to manage it all. And that person like.

Mike Hambright (26:41.879)
quits and they’re like, they get pulled in. Or out of state investors. Right. Yeah. I was working with these New York guys on this Houston property. They were running to the ground, just mismanaged water leaks, just trash laying around broken gate. I’m like, what are you guys doing? And so they wanted to sell it. And there was like, there’s no way in heck that you’re going to get that. And they have a balloon loan coming up in two years. Like we have to figure it out. So I was trying to work with them to just kind of do a master lease to where I’ll take over it. We have a pre-agreed upon.

sales price and if we make anything over it, we both make some money kind of thing. Well, I’ll take a little bit of risk. And I got it all the way to the lease agreement and then they just kept getting greedy on every little turn and so didn’t want to work with them. to me it was so simple.

Get somebody, a couple people on site, their current guy was just sitting in his office like it’s hotel, just watching TV. I mean, it’s a monthly park. What are you doing? Get your ass out there and go fix this water leak. The showers haven’t been clean in a month. There was a problem with security. It was East Houston, and it was a $50 sensor on the electric gate. Fix the freaking gate, because people are complaining about people driving in the middle of the night. There was about 10 or 15 of those little things. Add some marketing. Bring back propane sales, because it was big in that area.

you

the value probably would have been 50 % more in 12 months. Yeah. When you go to buy a park or look at buying a park, what are some value add things you can do? Obviously, some operational things like that. I know a lot of them have you’re looking for additional land to add more spots. That’s probably some of the most common things. Yeah. Yeah, because if you got the demand and you have room to build more, that’s an easy recipe. It’s just how do you pull it off? Yeah. But a lot of it’s operational. You can tell on the Google reviews that self-sabotage management

Mike Hambright (28:26.287)
management, Wi-Fi, there’s always water leaks, always turning my water off, then you’ll know they have some infrastructure issues. And you can tell a lot of that from the Google reviews, and really just looking at it. Yeah, yeah. So how do you find these things? I you’re not just necessarily, I mean, I guess there’s directories where you know every RV park there is, right? I mean, how do you market to owners? Like, how do you, it’s not exactly probably like single family, I’m guessing, but how do you market, how do you find deals? Yeah.

A of wholesalers and other people reach out to me. Part of our property management strategy is just reach out to owners and see if they need to reach their goals to exit or need some help running their park. And then naturally it will transition and be like, no, but I’ll sell it. And so we’ll sell some off market as well. So we’re just calling them, talking to them. And it’s easy. You could manage for them, or if they’re like, man, I just want to sell this thing, you’re like, OK, well. Yeah, or like, if I could just get X for this, and you look at their numbers, and if it’s not even working,

close to 10 % cap rate and you’re not on the ocean, then it’s based off your cap rate. So let’s come up with a strategy to get you to that cap rate where you you can get that exit number and then we both make some money. We’re all happy. What’s kind of the future of RV parks? Are there any trends that are coming on that are like?

there’s more amenities, there are more destination type things, or is it something other than that? I think overall, affordable housing, that’s never gonna go away, it’s never gonna change, it’s probably only gonna get worse. So more long term folks? Yeah, so I was working on developing a park in North Dallas and I’m-

I like this guy’s idea, I’m gonna steal it, is he would just have like little offices that you could rent, have a little key code and a little operating thing, so you can rent it for an hour for your Zoom. So if you lived in the park and you had a meeting or something or like this, you can go into there, kinda like a hotel has a little business center. Was it like a pod that you could get? Yeah, just a little office. I think it was part of the clubhouse or whatever. It was just your business center, like a hotel. So if look at it, it’s outdoor hospitality, whether it’s monthly or…

Mike Hambright (30:35.053)
or destination but you you’re seeing more gyms in there like and you can bring in yoga instructors because 67 percent of RVers are you know a little bit older and they got a dog and you know what I mean so just little things like that that you could just go a little bit extra to kind of set yourself apart and just do better. Yeah yeah that’s awesome. Well Jason if folks want to learn more about you or some of stuff you’re working on or follow follow your

Follow your story or whatever work and they go. Most of my stuff is just on Facebook, Jason Lafferty. And a website I’m working on rebranding is JasonVLafferty.com.

One of these days, I’m going do a podcast like you, get some YouTube stuff going. I don’t know if there’s anybody else doing the RV podcast, but it’s an interesting asset class. People are always looking for, I don’t say this is new, but it’s niche enough to where. Right.

There’s not a ton of people doing it. Yeah, like when I go to a local real estate networking group, I just put RV park stuff. And it’s so easy to talk to people because it’s novelty. It’s cute. It’s the same old stuff. Yeah, awesome. Well, you guys make sure you keep an eye on Jason. He’s doing some really cool stuff. Thanks for joining us on the show today. Thanks for having me. Yeah, great to see you again. So guys, if you’re interested in RV stuff, should definitely be following Jason. There’s a lot of ways to make money in real estate, right? And I think as a lot of us get older, if you don’t have the RV bug, know my wife

and I talk about it all the time. We’re going to be empty nesters at some point. And so we have the flexibility to kind of hit the road. And we love to travel. And so we kind of were doing this thing where we were trying to hit as many national parks as we can. We kind of fell into that little niche there. Plenty of gems. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. It’s amazing how many amazing things. For somebody that’s traveled all over the world, it’s amazing how much kind of natural beauty there is, even in the US, which is kind of our take on RVing. But appreciate you guys for joining us on the show. Hope you got some good value.

Mike Hambright (32:32.367)
See you on the next one.