Does a first park need somewhere for the owner to sleep?

Question

I've been reading two small park listings side by side for a month now and the difference that keeps stopping me isn't the site count. One has a three bedroom house at the front, old but liveable, and 22 sites behind it. The other has 30 sites, a nicer bathhouse, better power, and no dwelling of any kind. Prices are close enough that I could go either way.

The case for the house is obvious once you've watched a campground on a Friday night. Somebody has to be there when the guy in the fifth wheel arrives at 10pm having missed the turn twice, or when the pump breathes wrong. If I live in it for two seasons I learn the property the way you can't learn it from reports, and I don't pay anyone to learn it for me.

The case against is that I've just bought myself a job in a place I may not want to live, and I've paid for a house at park prices instead of buying sites that produce revenue. Plenty of small parks run with a camp host in a donated site and an owner two hours away. That house also has a roof, a septic tank, and every other thing a house has.

I genuinely don't know which one I'd rather own. For people who have looked at small parks, does the dwelling read as an asset or a liability to you?

derekj19 · Answer

The thing the house buys you is a labor pool of one, which is you. A camp host in a free site works until they don't, and then you're recruiting in a rural county in July. If the house lets you put a real person on site year round with a place to live, that's a hiring advantage more than a comfort thing. I'd want to know what the house rents for locally, because that number tells you what you're really paying to keep the option.

tylerbrooks9 · Answer

House, and I'd say that even though I don't want to live in it. It's the version where fewer things go wrong at 10pm.

Rena Expert · Answer

The choice turns on one assumption: whether you intend to operate for the first two or three seasons yourself.

If you do, price the dwelling as staff housing and test it against what on site coverage costs otherwise. Ask what a local manager or full time host would need in cash if housing weren't included, then compare that annual figure against the carrying cost of the house, taxes, insurance, and the maintenance a 40 or 60 year old rural structure actually consumes. Septic and well condition matter here, and both are worth a separate inspection rather than a walkthrough.

If you intend to hold this passively from day one, the dwelling is a second asset class inside your purchase price and it should be underwritten separately. Either it produces rent, or it produces coverage, or it produces expense. Sellers rarely break it out, so you're doing that work.

The 30 site park with better power is the one with more revenue capacity per acre, and 50 amp service is a rate driver in most markets because larger rigs won't book sites that can't run their air conditioning. So the honest comparison is not house versus no house. It's 22 sites plus housing plus a house's expense line, against 30 sites at a higher achievable nightly rate with an unresolved staffing question.

Run both at your own occupancy assumption, not the seller's, and see which one still services debt in a soft shoulder season. Local rules on residential use of a parcel zoned for a campground vary by state and county, so confirm with the county before you assume anyone can legally live there year round.

Does a first park need somewhere for the owner to sleep?

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