42 sites under contract. How much of the NOI do I believe?

Before anything else, are those twelve seasonal agreements written and signed, and do they include electric? At 2,800 a year that is 33,600, over a tenth of your gross, and if it is a handshake with people who have parked a trailer there for nine years you are inheriting a social arrangement rather than a contract. I would also want to know what year each of those twelve started, because a seasonal rate set in 2018 and never raised is very different from one that moves with the market. Ask him for the last three years of seasonal rate history in writing.

What is the difference between a full hookup site and water and electric only? Sewer connection at the pad, I assume?

Juniper, yes, full hookup means the site has a sewer inlet so the rig can dump without moving. That is why the pull throughs price higher.

Quill, the well is the line I would not skip. Output test, bacteria, and whether the state treats a well serving 42 sites as a public water system, which changes your testing and reporting duties and varies by state. In some states the moment you serve more than a set number of connections or people daily you fall into a regulated category with quarterly sampling and an operator certification. That is an annual expense line you do not have in your rebuild at all. Get the county or state drinking water office on the phone this week, not after closing.

6.2 in a rural lake town for something with a well and a four year old septic report is not a price I would pay, and I look at cheap rural stuff all day.

The six cabins are a separate problem from the sites. Depending on the county they can sit in a different use class than transient camping, and in a lot of jurisdictions nightly cabin rental triggers lodging or occupancy tax that the seller may or may not have been collecting. If he has not been remitting it, that liability question follows the entity if you buy equity and sometimes follows the property, which depends on state law and belongs in front of a tax professional before you close. I would also check whether the cabins were permitted at all. Owner built means owner built.

How did the broker get to 128k? Ask for the actual bank statements and the reservation software export, not the summary sheet. On the smaller listings I have looked at, the NOI line is usually gross minus whatever bills the owner happened to pay from the business account, with anything he paid personally sitting outside it. Your 38k manager add is probably right and I would add a payroll tax and workers comp load on top of it, because a manager couple is employees. That alone moves you a few more thousand down.

The twelve seasonals are the clause I would read twice. In several states, once someone occupies the same site continuously past a threshold, often 30 days but it varies, they stop being a transient guest for eviction purposes and you have to go through the regular process to remove them. Some states carve out RV parks explicitly, some do not, and the answer changes what a bad seasonal tenant costs you. Have a local attorney tell you which category your twelve fall into before you underwrite that 33,600 as reliable.

Separately, master metered electric on 30 full hookup sites with air conditioning running in August is not a rounding error. Get twelve months of utility bills and plot them. If July and August electric is running 3,500 a month, submetering is a capital project with a real payback, and whether you can bill submetered power to guests is regulated at the state level too.

Genuine question because this is the part that scares me. In February, when nobody is there, the loan payment still shows up. Does the summer cash cover eleven months of debt service and you just sit on a pile from September, or are you writing checks out of savings in the shoulder months? 84k rebuilt NOI against debt on 1.35M does not leave much room to be wrong.

Marlow's question is the one a lender will ask first. On seasonal assets the underwriting I have seen looks at annual debt service coverage but also wants to see how the off season is funded, sometimes through an interest reserve or a required operating account balance. Ask your lender directly what coverage they want and whether they will size on the seller's 128k or on your rebuilt 84k, and get that answer in writing before you spend money on a well test. Terms move, so confirm current requirements with the actual lender rather than assuming.

Quill, if they size on 84k your loan amount may not support 1.35M anyway, which makes the retrade conversation easier.

Retrade on the septic and the well and see what he says. If he blinks you learn something either way.

What broke on me at a much smaller scale was everything nobody puts on a P&L. Septic pumping schedule, the water heater in the bathhouse, and the wifi, which guests now treat as a utility and will hammer you in reviews over. Budget wifi as a real line, a couple hundred a month plus equipment, because a lake town backhaul is often mediocre and the fix is expensive.

Your 6,400 repairs line for 48 rentable units is fiction. On my buildings I use a per unit annual number and even at 400 a site you are at 19k, and cabins run higher than sites because they have interiors. That is another 12k off your rebuild, which puts you closer to 72k than 84k. At 1.35M that is a 5.3 cap and I think you already know what that means.