How I Bought a Zoo and Turned It Into a Profitable RV & Glamping Park

Amy Cooper (00:00)

That was my first foray into big real estate. Started with single family flips and then immediately, well, three years later moved into this space that has been an absolute blast and loving it. And so my first park actually bought a 77 acre Safari and RV park in Jacksonville, Texas. So talk about learning. ⁓ I literally bought a zoo.

Dylan Silver (01:59)

Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is an investor in the Phoenix, Arizona area by way of Texas and her company, Glampher, buys existing RV parks and adds glamping to them. Please welcome Amy Cooper. Amy, welcome to the show.

Amy Cooper (02:19)

Thank you so much for having me on. excited.

Dylan Silver (02:22)

I always like to start off at the top by asking folks how they got into real estate.

Amy Cooper (02:29)

Yeah, well, short story is, and it’s always very interesting because I watch a lot of podcasts and I love to hear stories. Mine’s a little different in that I was always in a W-2 role that dealt with real estate. So for a very long time, even though I had an entrepreneurial spirit, I was W-2 employee. I was in the paint business. I was in construction.

And all of those things were touching real estate, single family housing, multifamily housing, industrial warehouses. I held a job for a while that I was in charge of repainting property management ⁓ buildings in Phoenix. So I would write a scope and get painters, big paint contractors to come to the job and give the owner or property manager an apples to apples bid. So I really was always touching, feeling real estate. And I had moved to

Phoenix from Texas in 2000. So really saw the busy time of multifamily and the very infancy stages, even single family was huge back then here, new builds, it was crazy. So I was always on the cusp of it and seeing all of that and was very interested in it, but knew I had to have the W-2. I had started ⁓

Dylan Silver (03:37)

Yeah.

Amy Cooper (03:51)

a business here in Phoenix with my ex-husband. And when we split, I let him have the business and I decided I would just go back into corporate, into the corporate world. So I was a single mom at with a W-2 and that’s what I needed to do to make things make sense. So fast forward to my daughter being in college and I said to her, she, we were at where she came to a conference with me and I was a speaker at a conference and we talked afterwards and we were talking.

about where she was going to really focus her energies in school. She was getting a business degree. She wasn’t really sure which way she wanted to go. And I told her, said, for the next few years, if you can figure out what type of business you want, I’ll come along beside you and help you build that business so you can have your own business and you won’t be in a W-2 because I did not want that for her. She had an entrepreneurial spirit like myself and I wanted to give her that leg up. My parents were W-2 employees.

God loved them. gave us an amazing foundation, but I wanted something different for her. So we had this conversation. She said, you know, I’m really interested in real estate, but I don’t know what that would look like.

Dylan Silver (04:48)

Yeah.

Amy Cooper (05:47)

So we joined a three day program and learned a lot about a lot of things, a little bit about a lot of things, right? The single family flips, the buy and holds, wholesaling, all of those different avenues. And we rolled out of that and started doing single family flips in Phoenix.

did really well for a few years. And then at the same time we were doing that, I was actually business development, VP of business development for a multifamily firm that had wanted to go to third party management. So I was taking that offering to all of the owners and investors of multifamily here in Phoenix, which you know is a hotspot, was a hotspot, has been a hotspot.

So as I was doing all these single family flips for my side hustle, I was working with all of these groups and I was looking at LOIs and I was helping them when they had their signed PSA go into due diligence. And I was watching as their asset managers were going through all of the roles and all of the nuances of taking down a multifamily property. I just something in my gut, even though it was the thing to do and everybody was doing it.

I had distance set for me. And so I had always been very intrigued in manufactured housing and RV parks. And the reason being people pay you for dirt. They’re not calling you and saying, hey, my toilet’s broken. Hey, what’s happening with the security gate? Hey, what’s this? What’s that? And it was very intriguing to me and just so have.

Dylan Silver (07:15)

Right.

Amy Cooper (07:27)

So had it. I was part of a group that one of the women in that group told me about a property she knew about in Texas, which was an hour outside of Dallas, Fort Worth, which is where I was from originally. Very comfort, like, I knew the area. knew about that area. was seller financing was available, which was another thing for me, not being in this industry and getting my feet wet, I needed that opportunity.

Dylan Silver (07:54)

Yeah.

Amy Cooper (07:55)

That was my first foray into big real estate. Started with single family flips and then immediately, well, three years later moved into this space that has been an absolute blast and loving it. And so my first park actually bought a 77 acre Safari and RV park in Jacksonville, Texas. So talk about learning. ⁓ I literally bought a zoo.

Dylan Silver (08:23)

That

sounds very high end.

Amy Cooper (08:26)

Well, it’s yeah, it’s not high end. It’s literally so our Safari is herd animals. It’s not lions, tigers and bears. We’ve got orcs and we have Jacob sheep and we’ve got some. Different types of deer, so there’s different, know there you have a fallow deer and a sika deer. We’ve got a high fence and so it’s a sanctuary. We also have a 10 acre fishing lake.

And so it’s a great place for people to come and visit. And some people, we do have a long-term component at that park and they love it because these freely ranging herd animals just roam around. We’ve got 20 black buck antelope, which are amazing animals to watch as well. We have babies all the time. We have people fishing, you know, they come in, the people that live there will go and fish in the evenings.

And then the people that come to visit just love it because it’s just this peaceful little place and they love it. And it’s been something that I’ve cut my teeth on. It’s been very interesting.

Dylan Silver (09:34)

I gotta get myself an RV, but I know that ⁓ it’s interesting because RV is now this very flex space because you have a lot of people who are using it as luxury, high-end, the getaway, but also, you know, a getaway maybe to the wilderness. But then on the other hand, you have people who are using it as their, you know, housing, as maybe a digital nomad or as really just an affordable way to live.

Amy Cooper (10:35)

It is, and that’s one of the things that I’ve recognized as I’ve gotten in more involved in the industry. know, originally I thought, it’s for the retired couple that wants to go see the country. And to your point, after 2020, we’ve got tons of people that are digital nomads. We have a lot of people that even prior to 2020,

have started homeschooling their children and they’ll do it for three to four years where they’ll just take their young kids out on the road and experience life, experience all the different places. And it’s amazing how many different RV park models there are. You have some like my park in Texas that’s very out in the country. And then you have some that are in the cities that are just, or at least peripherally that are very high-end and very tech. And so it’s been…

Dylan Silver (11:14)

Yeah.

Amy Cooper (11:28)

really fun to learn and really understand, okay, this is a true business. One of the things that has been amazing for me is I found a partner through an RV park mastermind who also had her first parks and was learning and we joined forces and we created Glam Her. And the reason we did that was because my business partner is able to find parks. She has an acquisitions model that is great.

I was raising capital, so we came together. She’s like, I have plenty of parks. I’m like, I have plenty of money. Let’s figure this out. And so it’s a meet. It’s been a great partnership to come together and find these parks. And, know, we’re buying from mom and pops and it’s really nice when you can go in and somebody has taken really good care. Some of them haven’t taken as good care of, or there’s been an illness or there’s a reason that they aren’t able to perform anymore on the asset.

So they need to get rid of it. And then we’re able to talk to them. Most of the time we’re getting seller financing, which is amazing because again, that leverage really helps us. And then we come in and upscale the amenities and we either add sites for RVs, but we always add glamping. So we’re always looking for a park that we have space to grow. Our most recent acquisition is in ⁓ Arkansas. It’s Beaver Lake, Arkansas, just outside of Rogers.

some of the best mountain biking in the country, second in the nation, absolutely phenomenal mountain biking there. And we’re right on the lake. have 26 acres and we’ve got 10 boat slips. And so we have this amazing privative camping area that we’re adding A-frames and tree houses and all of these different nuances where they’re not even really close.

Dylan Silver (13:10)

Arkansas has a lot

of that. see that on when I was living in North Dallas. I saw that on Airbnb. They had a lot of tree houses, a lot of glamping. said, wow, is this the number one state in the country for glamping? It might be, it might be.

Amy Cooper (13:18)

Yes.

It’s amazing what glamping has become. There are so many components. You can have canvas, you can have A-frames, can have tree houses, yurts, covered wagons. I mean, you name it, it’s out there. And it’s been so fun to look at properties and come up with a vision. Where are we going to place this? What goes here? And so we don’t necessarily go in and put this same unit.

same glamping unit at every park. We really do get a feel for that park, what the guest demographic is going to be and what that’s really going to look like for people. So it’s been really fun to do, really, really exciting.

Dylan Silver (14:06)

I

want to ask you about managing these parks. think one of the interesting things about RV parks that I have heard a couple times now is that people are going there, they’re in a leisurely mood, they’re expecting to have a good time. The RV, they bring the RV, so it’s not like there is maintenance on the part of the owner. The land is the land. Depending on the amenities, they may be different. You’ve got some really high end. I mean, you’ve got the safari, right, the animals.

other places will have. I’ve heard all different types of things from restaurants and theaters and water park. said, I can’t believe all these different niches in the RV park space. But what is generally the spectrum of maintenance like when you own an RV park?

Amy Cooper (14:52)

So it really depends on the park. You’ve got some parks that are city water, city sewer. So that takes your maintenance

quite a bit. Most of the parks that you find are going to be septic and well. So it’s a big component, right? You need to have good systems. So due diligence is really big when you’re really taking a look at those systems and how they’ve been built and how they’re holding up to all of elements.

So

That’s the biggest I would say is where because again, you aren’t you don’t have toilets, you do have facilities. So you typically are going to have a laundry room and you’re going to have a men’s and women’s locker room or bath bath house facilities because you know, even people that are traveling in their RVs, they really want those facilities and most of our glamping units will have those facilities. But some of them, we actually have bath houses that are close to the glamping areas.

So I would say as far as maintenance, it’s really landscaping is huge, right? Because when you drive into someplace, it’s kind of like pulling into somebody’s backyard, right? You don’t want your grass high. You don’t want your tree limbs hanging down. So it’s something that we take a lot of pride in. We really want to make sure that when you drive in, it’s pristine. It looks really nice. The other thing is your sites. So what is your site composed of? Is it concrete? Is it asphalt?

Is it crushed rock? You what does that look like? And it’s funny because different areas of the country, there’s different expectations. Some areas grass is what’s expected, whereas other areas, you know, you’re going to have a concrete pad. So for instance, in Arizona, most of the time you’re going to the higher end parks are going to have concrete pads. So there’s a level of maintenance that comes with each site.

and each system and so as we manage through that usually we have an on-site manager who lives at the park and we’ll also have seasonal people, work campers, that will come in during the high season. So usually from May to September, October they’ll come in and be a support to that manager that’s already there and then always having a maintenance person that’s either close by or lives on-site is almost imperative at parks.

Dylan Silver (17:51)

Amy we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go if maybe they have a mobile. ⁓ Well I shouldn’t say mobile home. I got that confused. That’s that you can’t say that. Where should they go if they have an RV park deal that they’d like you to look at or maybe if they’d like to reach out to you or even stay at one of the parks.

Amy Cooper (18:10)

Yeah,

so they can reach out to me directly at amy@glampher.com and you can also go to our website which is amy@glampher.com so that has a list of our parks as well as links to those sites and if somebody wanted to go see those but it’s amazing how many people do reach out.

because they know we’re in the market and that’s what we do and we love to look at deals. We’re both, we’re all of us, our whole team is deal junkies. It’s always cause you look and you see the vision and you get to talk and think and it’s fun. So love to love to hear of anybody that might have something they’d be interested in selling.

Dylan Silver (18:53)

Amy, thank you so much

for coming on the show here today.

Amy Cooper (18:56)

Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.