Which kind of demand would you rather own under a first parking lot

Before the demand question, look at what documents come with each one, because they differ a lot.

Event parking often runs through an agreement with the venue or a promoter, sometimes a revenue split, sometimes exclusive signage or shuttle terms. That agreement can be most of the value, and it can also be short and cancellable. Ask to see it, and ask when it renews.

Monthly contract lots come with a stack of individual agreements. Read three of them. Some are month to month with no rate escalation language at all, which means every increase is a fresh conversation and a chance for the driver to walk. Hospital lots sometimes have a master agreement with the health system covering staff spaces, which is closer to a commercial lease in how it behaves.

Whether any of those documents create a lease interest or just a license to park changes your rights, and that turns on state law, so have a lawyer in that state read them.

Keystone, the arena one is the one I'd want most paper on and would probably get the least.

Staffing is the real cost on event lots, and it rarely shows up in the pro forma. Seventy nights a year at $30 a car sounds wonderful until you price two attendants for five hours plus a supervisor who actually shows up, and until the night someone backs into a parked car and you find out what your insurance covers.

My service business runs crews for property owners, and the event work is the hardest to staff. It's nights, it's weekends, it's cash handling, and turnover is brutal. If you're doing it yourself you're personally standing in a lot in November.

The monthly-contract lot is the one closest to what most people expect from parking. Cards, a camera, someone driving by weekly. The hospital lot sits in between because there's traffic at all hours and more chance of an incident.

Warrant's right that the venue agreement carries the event lot. I'd add that if that agreement includes the venue selling your inventory for you, half your operating problem goes away.

Seconding thatch on labor. Every event lot I've bid work on assumed my crew rate from four years ago and got surprised.

Looking at these from the debt side changes the order. A lender sizing a loan wants income they can count on for the next twelve months, and monthly contracts are the easiest thing in parking to underwrite because there's a rent roll of sorts. Transient revenue gets haircut. Event revenue that depends on a schedule someone else controls gets haircut hard, or excluded, and I've seen structures where an event lot got sized on the land value rather than the parking cash flow at all.

That means the same $700k lot supports very different loan amounts depending on where the revenue comes from. Terms and how any lender treats this move around, so get it in writing from the specific lender before you put a lot under contract on an assumption.

Keystone, if part of your reason for buying is redevelopment later, ask the lender what happens to the loan if the parking income drops because you stopped renting spaces during entitlement. Some documents care about that, some don't.

The private capital I've watched looking at parking barely talks about demand type. They talk about who else wants the block.

A lot near an arena and a lot near a hospital can both be fine parking. The difference in the conversations I've listened in on is whether a developer is going to want that dirt in seven years, and what use that dirt can carry. That's zoning, parcel size, frontage, whether you can assemble with the neighbor. The parking income covers the carry while you wait, and it needs to cover taxes, insurance and pavement without you feeding it.

So I'd flip your question. Pick the parcel whose land you'd still want if the parking revenue went to zero, then check that the current use pays the carry. That tends to point at office and hospital districts more than a gravel lot on the edge of an arena's walk radius, though I've seen arena-adjacent land get bid up by hotel developers for reasons that had nothing to do with cars.