How to Finance an RV Park or Campground and Why It Sets Your Sale Price

Most articles about financing outdoor hospitality are written for buyers. They list loan products, explain what SBA stands for, and send you on your way.

That's not the article I want to write, because in ten years and 150+ closings across 21 states, I've watched more deals die over financing than over price. And here's the part almost nobody says out loud to owners:

You can hold out for a 7-cap all day. If the debt markets will only underwrite your park at an 8.5, then the only buyers who can pay your number are all-cash - and all-cash buyers don't pay retail. That's it. That's the whole mechanism. Your financing environment isn't something that happens at closing. It's the ceiling on your valuation, and it was set 18 to 24 months before anyone ever called you.

So this is a financing guide written for both sides of the table, because if you own a park you need to understand debt as well as the person buying it from you.

Why lenders treat your park differently than an apartment building

An RV park is a hybrid asset. It's dirt and improvements - real estate collateral - sitting underneath what is functionally an operating business with nightly pricing, seasonal demand, staffing, and a store.

Lenders hate hybrids. Their boxes are built for one or the other.

Push toward the real estate side of that line - long-term annual tenants, stable rent roll, minimal services - and you unlock cheaper, longer, more passive-friendly capital. Push toward the business side - heavy transient, nightly rates, cabins, glamping units, events, F&B - and you get business-acquisition-style lending: shorter horizons, personal guarantees, more scrutiny of the operator, and higher rates.

Neither is wrong. But you should know which side of the line your park sits on, because that single fact determines who can lend on it, who can buy it, and what it's worth.

Quick gut check on where you sit:

Most parks I take to market sit somewhere in the middle. The mistake is not knowing where - and then getting surprised when the lender's underwriting comes back looking nothing like your P&L.

Match your capital to your asset's stage, not to what's trendy

The single most common financing failure I see isn't a bad rate. It's the wrong product for where the asset actually is. Here's the ladder.

• Stage 1

  Land, entitlement, or ground-up development

  You have dirt and a vision. There's no income, so there's nothing to underwrite except you.

  What works

  Local and regional banks with a land loan (expect 50-60% LTV, recourse, short term). SBA 504 for ground-up construction if you'll be the operator. USDA B&I if you're genuinely rural. Seller carry on the land itself while you entitle.

  What to know

  Nobody is lending against your pro forma. They're lending against your balance sheet, your construction budget, and whether the bank's credit committee has ever seen a campground before. Bring a completed feasibility study, a GC contract, and a wastewater plan or you're wasting the meeting.

• Stage 2

  Operating but underperforming (the repositioning play)

  The park works, but occupancy is soft, rates are ten years old, half the sites are 30-amp, and the books are a shoebox.

  What works

  Bridge debt or a debt fund (12-24 months, interest-only, floating over SOFR, 1-2 points). SBA 7(a) if the buyer will be an owner-operator. Seller financing with an interest-only ramp. Occasionally a local bank that knows you personally.

  What to know

  Bridge lenders don't care about your current numbers - they care about your exit. If you can't show them the specific refinance or sale that pays them off, you don't have a deal, you have a countdown clock. I've seen good operators lose good parks because the reposition took 30 months and the loan matured at 24.

• Stage 3

  Stabilized with two-plus years of clean history

  This is where the money gets cheap.

  What works

  Conventional bank or credit union debt (70-75% LTV, 20-25 year amortization, often a 5-year balloon, usually recourse). SBA 7(a) up to $5M for owner-operators. CMBS if you're above roughly $5M and annual-heavy. Fannie/Freddie if you're a manufactured housing community.

  What to know

  "Stabilized" means documented, not just true. Two years of tax returns that reconcile to your P&L is the price of admission. Everything below this line is a story; everything above it is a spreadsheet.

• Stage 4

  Portfolio and institutional

  Multiple assets, professional management, audited or reviewed financials.

  What works

  CMBS, life company debt on the MH side, credit facilities, debt funds with portfolio appetite, non-recourse leverage.

The seven adjustments that quietly erase 25% of your NOI

This is the section I'd tear out and tape to the wall.

Every owner I meet has a number in their head for NOI. Almost every one of those numbers is higher than what a lender will underwrite. The gap isn't dishonesty - it's that lenders normalize. Here's what they do to your P&L, and what you do about it.

• 1

  They impute a management fee.

  Even if you and your spouse run the place yourselves for free, the lender assumes a third party at 4-6% of effective gross income. On $800K of revenue that's $32,000-$48,000 straight off your NOI.

  What to do: Nothing - you can't argue this away. But you can price your park knowing the fee is coming, and you can build a lean, documented management structure so the imputed fee is defensible at 4% instead of 6%.
• 2

  They deduct replacement reserves.

  Typically $200-$300 per site per year. On 100 sites, that's another $20,000-$30,000.

  What to do: Keep a real capex ledger. If you've replaced the pedestals, resurfaced the roads, and rebuilt the bathhouse in the last three years, a lender is more likely to sit at the bottom of that range.
• 3

  They reset insurance to a current bound quote - not what you paid.

  This is the biggest silent killer right now. Owners are showing me T-12s with insurance from a policy written three years ago. The buyer's quote comes in at double.

  What to do: Get a current quote before you go to market. If it's ugly, shop it, raise deductibles, or address the underlying condition (roof age, electrical, tree canopy) before the number becomes a negotiating point against you.
• 4

  They reassess property taxes at the new basis.

  Your taxes are based on what you paid. The buyer's will be based on what they pay. In Texas and a dozen other states, that's a five-figure NOI reduction that appears out of nowhere.

  What to do: Model it yourself. Know your county's reassessment behavior and bring the number to the table before the buyer's lender does.
• 5

  They strip out non-recurring revenue.

  The eclipse weekend. The one-time rally. The pipeline crew that took 20 sites for six months. Great income - zero credit from an underwriter.

  What to do: Show three years of it or expect to lose it. If a "one-time" event actually recurs, prove the pattern.
• 6

  They haircut ancillary income.

  Store, propane, firewood, laundry, cabin rentals, golf carts. Lenders discount this because it's business income, not rent - sometimes 20%, sometimes entirely if it's under-documented.

  What to do: Run it through the POS. Cash income you can't prove is income you don't have.
• 7

  They normalize your add-backs - and they're stingier than you.

  Your truck, your phone, your kid on payroll, your family trip to the RV show. Some of that comes back. Not all of it.

  What to do: Document every add-back with a line-item explanation and supporting invoice at the time you make it, not eighteen months later when a buyer's analyst asks.

Run the math yourself before a lender runs it on you

Let me show you what all of that looks like on a real-shaped deal. These numbers are illustrative - but the shape of them is something I see constantly.

78-site park. Mixed annual and transient. Seller wants $5.9M.

That's a 26% haircut. Now watch what it does to the debt.

At a 1.25x debt service coverage requirement, that NOI supports about $314,700 of annual debt service. On a 25-year amortization at 10.5%, that's roughly a $2.78M loan.

Against a $5.9M price, the buyer needs $3.1M in cash. That's a 53% down payment. That buyer does not exist in any volume.

So the deal is dead - unless somebody closes the gap. There are exactly three ways:

That is the entire argument for doing your financing homework as a seller. The $61K of NOI you recover with three phone calls is worth roughly seven times that in proceeds.

The lender menu, honestly assessed

Seller financing that actually closes

"Ask the seller to carry" is not a strategy. Here's what structure actually looks like.

The 90-day lender-ready sprint

Whether you're buying or selling, this is the work. It is not glamorous and it is worth more per hour than anything else you'll do this year.

The deal killers

In rough order of how often they blow up a closing:

1. Permitted site count doesn't match marketed site count. The appraiser only credits what's permitted. I've watched this one line item move a valuation by seven figures.
2. Wastewater capacity undocumented. No permit, no expansion story, no loan.
3. Cash income you can't prove. It isn't income. Full stop.
4. Commingled entities. If the park's finances run through the same account as three other businesses, you don't have financials.
5. Flood zone exposure without an elevation certificate.
6. A short or lender-unfriendly ground lease. Remaining term needs to meaningfully exceed the loan term, with standard lender protections.
7. Environmental history - old USTs, prior industrial use, unpermitted fill.
8. A seller who won't produce three years of returns. Every buyer reads this the same way, and they're usually right.

The point

Financing is not the last step of a transaction. It's the first constraint on one - and it's the one owners have the most quiet control over and exercise the least.

Every item in the 90-day sprint above is something you can do while you're still operating, with no broker, no buyer, and no deadline. Do it eighteen months before you sell and you'll walk into the market with a defensible NOI, a broad buyer pool, and leverage. Do it after you're under contract and you'll be doing it during due diligence, against the clock, with a buyer holding a red pen.

At North Star we work exclusively in outdoor hospitality - RV parks, campgrounds, MH communities, marinas, storage, and tiny home communities - across 21 states. A meaningful part of what we do isn't listing. It's getting an asset financeable before it ever hits the market, because that's where the value actually gets created.

If you want to know how your park underwrites in today's debt market before you make any decision about selling, that's a conversation worth having early.