Why Outdoor Hospitality Is Drawing Serious Capital Right Now

RV park and campground investing has moved from niche hobby to institutional target in under five years. KOA reported record campsite revenues in 2021 and 2022. Private equity funds launched dedicated outdoor hospitality vehicles. REITs added campground portfolios. Sun Communities spent over $2 billion acquiring RV and manufactured housing communities in a single year.

That institutional attention is a signal, not a ceiling. Most of the roughly 16,000 private campgrounds and RV parks in the United States are still owned by individuals or small family operators. Fragmentation creates opportunity, but only for buyers who reach those owners before the wave of capital does it for them.

If you wait until a property hits LoopNet, you are already competing with five other buyers who have been working the owner directly for six months.

What Makes RV Parks Attractive as an Asset Class

Before building your prospecting list, understand why this asset class deserves dedicated acquisition effort.

Low construction competition. Zoning restrictions and NIMBYism make permitted campground and RV park development extremely difficult in most markets. Existing supply cannot grow quickly, which supports occupancy and rate growth for current owners.

Recession resilience. Camping is a low-cost leisure option relative to hotels or international travel. During the 2008 recession and again during 2020, campground occupancy held steadier than most hospitality categories.

Multiple revenue streams. A single park can generate income from nightly and monthly RV site rentals, cabin or glamping rentals, seasonal memberships, storage fees, camp store sales, and laundry or utility fees. That diversification gives buyers more levers to pull post-acquisition.

Operational upside. Many family-owned parks are run on paper reservations, cash payments, and word-of-mouth marketing. Bringing in a reservation management system like Campspot or RoverPass, dynamic pricing, and basic digital marketing can lift revenue 20-40% without a single dollar of physical improvement.

The Sourcing Gap: Why Off-Market Is the Only Real Play

Mom-and-pop campground operators rarely work with commercial brokers. Many have owned the same property for 20 or 30 years. They did not buy from a broker and they are unlikely to sell through one. When they do decide to exit, they often tell a neighbor, post in a campground owner Facebook group, or sell to the first person who made them a credible offer two years earlier.

That is the gap you need to occupy. The investors and brokers who will win in this space over the next 36 months are the ones building owner relationships right now, before the seller even knows they want to sell.

Off-market sourcing in this asset class is not optional. It is the strategy.

Building Your Campground and RV Park Owner List

Start with geography and property type, then layer in data to identify the best outreach targets.

Step 1: Define your target markets. Pick 3-5 states or regions where you have acquisition criteria that pencil. Drive-to markets within 2-3 hours of major metro areas have been the strongest performers. Think the Ozarks relative to Dallas or St. Louis, the Smokies relative to Atlanta and Charlotte, the Pocono region relative to New York and Philadelphia.

Step 2: Pull property records. Use a platform like CRE Finder to search for RV parks and campgrounds by property type, county, and ownership structure. Filter for individual or family LLC ownership to skip properties already held by institutional players. You want the 40-site park on 15 acres owned by a 68-year-old couple, not the 300-site KOA franchise.

Step 3: Skip-trace owners. Many campground owners hold title in personal names or simple LLCs with no registered agent contact information worth pursuing. Skip-tracing pulls mobile numbers, email addresses, and mailing addresses tied to those entities. CRE Finder integrates skip-trace directly into the owner search workflow, so you are not bouncing between three different tools.

Step 4: Layer in age and tenure signals. Owners who have held a property for 15 or more years and are likely in their 60s or older represent your highest-probability sellers. They are thinking about estate planning, capital gains strategies, and whether their kids actually want to run a campground. The answer is usually no.

Step 5: Add public data signals. Check permit records, delinquent tax rolls, and any code violation history. A park that has been cited for sewage or electrical issues may have an owner who is tired and undercapitalized, which is a motivated seller signal.

Outreach That Actually Gets Responses

Campground owners are not commercial real estate professionals. They respond to outreach that feels personal and specific, not mass-market investor letters.

Personalize your direct mail. Reference the specific park name, the number of years they have owned it, and something genuine about the property or its location. A letter that says "I have been following Riverside Family Campground for the past year and admire what you have built over 22 seasons" lands differently than "Dear Property Owner."

Call before you mail. A brief, low-pressure phone call to introduce yourself, followed by a letter, followed by a second call two weeks later, outperforms any single-channel approach. Use the mobile number from your skip-trace data.

Offer education, not just a purchase price. Many owners have no idea what their park is worth or how a sale could be structured to defer capital gains. Position yourself as someone who can walk them through the process, not just hand them a lowball LOI.

Timing Is the Actual Competitive Advantage

Institutional buyers move slowly. They need deal committees, investment memos, and fund deployment timelines. A well-prepared individual buyer or small operator can close faster, with fewer contingencies, and with a seller experience that feels more like a handshake than a corporate acquisition.

That speed advantage only exists if you have already done the sourcing work. Building your owner list takes weeks. Warming up relationships takes months. By the time a property is actively shopped, your timing advantage is gone.

The operators who start their RV park and campground owner list today are the ones who will be closing off-market deals when the broader market peaks and sourcing becomes genuinely difficult.

Start with the data. Build the list. Make the calls. The outdoor hospitality wave is still building, but the window to get ahead of it is narrowing.

RV Park and Campground Acquisition: Build Your Owner List