Filling shoulder season with monthly guests keeps running into the 30 day line

Your attorney is pointing at the right mechanism. In many states, occupancy past a threshold (commonly in the 28 to 30 day range, sometimes tied to whether the site is the person's primary residence) can shift a transient guest toward tenancy protections, and it can also change how lodging or occupancy tax applies. The threshold, the test and the eviction process all vary by state and sometimes by county, so the operating answer has to come from your counsel in writing, not from a rate sheet.

On the numbers, $21 against $12.76 is the right comparison only if the marginal cost of the two guests is the same, and it isn't. Metered power helps, but monthly guests use more water, more sewer, more laundry and more of your staff's attention, and they park older units that leak fluids onto your pads. Price the wear, not just the site-night.

The bigger exposure is exit. Buyers and appraisers underwrite long-term site revenue differently from transient revenue, and a rent roll with 25 monthly units on it reads as a different asset than a destination park with a $58 ADR. Some lenders and some carriers will also treat it differently, and a few carriers won't write a park with permanent-looking occupancy at all. Ask your insurance broker what happens to the policy if a third of the sites go monthly, before you sell a single month.

The cleaner version of what you're reaching for is a defined seasonal product with a hard end date and a written stay-length cap that sits under your state's threshold, plus power submetered and billed at cost. It gives up some revenue. It also means April doesn't decide what your park is in five years.

Two parks near me are basically 80% monthly workforce sites at $525 with power on top, and nightly is an afterthought. Totally different business, way lower marketing spend, way more knocking on doors about late payments. Whichever one you pick you should probably pick it on purpose.

Question on the submetering. If power is currently on the park meter, what does retrofitting 62 pedestals with billable meters run, and does your state let you bill through at cost plus a fee or only at cost? That number decides whether monthly at $650 is even the same deal.

Payroll is the piece I'd look at before revenue. Running five months hard and then keeping a body around for 22% occupancy is how I've watched service businesses bleed. If you go monthly you now have year-round staffing, year-round water system compliance, plowing maybe. My shoulder season answer in my own business was to close two weeks and stop pretending.

Genuinely asking, what does closing April and October cost you compared to what it saves? 22% occupancy sounds like a lot of open hours for very little.

Before the tenancy question, check the use permit and the county ordinance. Plenty of recreational campground zoning around here has an explicit maximum stay written into it, sometimes 180 days, sometimes much shorter, and some ordinances flatly prohibit using an RV as a dwelling. That varies county to county. If yours has a cap, your attorney's 30 day question is moot and the ordinance already made the decision. Ask the planning department for the approved conditions in writing rather than reading the zoning text alone, because conditions of approval often go further than the code.