There are several methods to find RV Parks to purchase, including brokers, online listings, direct mail, and cold calling. On the topic of online listings, the most extensive website is RVParkStore.com, which has more RV Parks for sale than any other website.
As a result, we recently had a discussion with Dylan Shrader, CEO of RVParkStore.com, on how to correctly use the website as a buyer, as well as hidden features on listings and new enhancements for 2024.
If you are looking for an RV Park, then this discussion should be of great interest to you.
Looking For An RV Park To Buy? - Transcript
0:00:00.1
Frank Rolfe: This is Frank Rolfe. It's my pleasure today to have, as a guest,
Dylan Shrader, who is the CEO of rvparkstore.com, We wanted to bring Dylan on to talk about how RV Park Store works, how it benefits those looking to buy an RV park, some of the hidden features of the site, and then some of the items going on in the future. And let me start off by saying that if you're looking to buy an RV park for, well over a decade, a great resource to find RV parks that fit your investment goals has been RV Park Store. And it starts from a very ground zero moment, which occurred back kind of after the internet got going when Dave Reynolds built the site, as an RV park owner. So it was an RV park owner building a website for other RV park owners to find RV parks to buy. Dave was a broker back at that point, so he also assumed he could put listings on there himself, but it kind of organically grew out of that to be kind of the dominant online source of RV parks. And then Dylan Shrader has been CEO and running that site now for about a decade. So, Dylan, are you here with us?
0:01:18.2
Dylan Shrader: I am, I am. Hello Frank. Thanks for having me.
0:01:20.8
Frank Rolfe: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Dylan, let's just jump, jump right into it. I mean, our rvparkstore.com name of the website and, what can people find on there? Like what is the data that is available for people looking to buy an RV park and they wanna go on and look at options to buy? Why RV Park Store? What will they find in RV Park Store?
0:01:46.3
Dylan Shrader: Yeah, so as you mentioned, it's, it's been around a long time. I think it was founded, around 2007, by Dave Reynolds. And yeah it's the number one site in the country that is focused specifically on the RV park space, the listings on the site include mainly RV parks, but also some campgrounds, some RV resort properties, and some that include marinas as well, since there's a lot of crossover, between those segments, we've got listings of all those types on the website, most of which include some RV park aspect to them, and, yeah, it's, the site was built with the intention of connecting, the buyers and sellers of RV parks and, it has succeeded in doing that for going on 16 years now. And, yeah, it's still going strong.
0:02:57.7
Frank Rolfe: And Dylan is it true that RV Park store has more RV parks on it than say, LoopNet is RV Park Store the dominant online option?
0:03:07.9
Dylan Shrader: That is true, that is true. We track our competitors closely, and we have been tracking them for a long time, and, yeah, absolutely true. I think our hyper focus on the specific segment, has served us well over the years. That means when you, if a buyer, an investor runs a Google search, we're showing up at the very top of those results is driving a ton of buyer traffic to the website. And the flip side of that is, the sellers of RV parks and the brokers who specialize in RV parks know that we can help get their listings sold. And so they're all putting their listings on our website, yeah, that's absolutely true, yep.
0:04:04.5
Frank Rolfe: And Dylan, let's talk for a bit about what kind of information people put on RV Park store. Obviously it's going to have probably an address, although not always.
0:04:13.0
Dylan Shrader: True. Not always.
0:04:15.5
Frank Rolfe: Maybe some photos. What kind of stuff, typically when the people fill out the form to get their RV park on RV Park store, what are some of the key blanks that they're filling in?
0:04:24.8
Dylan Shrader: Yeah, yeah. The key ones are price and location would be top of the list. Photos. Photos for sure, everybody wants to see photos, other key things for RV parks would be lot rent. We have a field for average lot rent, the number of spaces in the lot. That's also very important, we do have other fields on there for, what else? Amenities, of course, that's something else that people are interested in, so there are a number of amenities you can list for the park, yeah, anything else come to mind, I'm sure we have a field for it, those are top of the list.
0:05:14.7
Frank Rolfe: Well, basically, most of the data you would need to make an educated offer, correct?
0:05:19.9
Dylan Shrader: Yeah. The financial, I overlooked the financial data, but that's a key one too, of course, yeah, is the financial data and a lot of the brokers especially and sellers will include as attachments spreadsheets showing, specific financial data as well, which is very helpful when making these types of, investment decisions.
0:05:45.1
Frank Rolfe: Right. And then as far as strategic hidden features, obviously to me, one important strategic item on there is it shows when it first appeared on the site, and as a result, you can see how long it's been sitting, because history has proven that when a seller has an RV park out there for a while and it's gathering dust and it's not moving, they tend to like anyone would drop the price or be a little more anxious about the price. And therefore, often you can get better deals on things that have sat because people are losing their enthusiasm as far from a seller's perspective that, oh, maybe I priced it too high, or maybe there's some other flaw that makes it not quite as attractive. So that's one item, right. So again...
0:06:29.9
Dylan Shrader: Yeah, that's a very good point. That's a very good point. You can see the date the park was added to the website. We will call out the websites that have dropped the price as well. So it's kind of easy to, if you're scrolling through a search results for a specific area or something, it's kind of, we flag the ones that have reduced the price. So that's helpful, and what we recommend to everyone who's searching the site is go ahead and set up a free save search email alert. So after you run any search on our site for whatever region you're looking in, the state, county, whatever it might be there'll be a button on the screen that says, save this search. And it's free. You just give us your email address and your name, and we're gonna email you anytime a listing that matches your search criteria, hits the website, it saves you the hassle of having to come back and check all the time.
0:07:33.5
Dylan Shrader: Let us tell you and you can set up as many of those searches as you want, something else we recommend for the really aggressive investors is we have something called early access program. It's paid service, but it gives you access to listing data three days before it goes public on our site to everybody. So that gives you a little headstart on the listings. And that service also includes, an email that will alert you to price drops. So you'll get the newest listings first, and you'll get an alert about listings that have lowered their prices which are, both can be very helpful, obviously when you're looking for a park to invest in.
0:08:21.2
Frank Rolfe: And Dylan, what is just Ball Park, what is the cost of an early access?
0:08:27.8
Dylan Shrader: It's $20 a month. So it's very reasonable for someone who's looking to make an investment which could easily be in the millions. Right. It's...
0:08:41.1
Frank Rolfe: Right.
0:08:41.2
Dylan Shrader: Yeah. So...
0:08:42.2
Frank Rolfe: Okay.
0:08:43.3
Dylan Shrader: Yeah.
0:08:43.5
Frank Rolfe: And then let's talk for a minute about what you see in the future on the site. The site's been around for a long time. Things change, things move at the speed of light anymore in a new technology world. What kind of things do you have upcoming? Are there any enhancements or things for RV Park Store on the horizon?
0:09:01.9
Dylan Shrader: Yeah, a couple, the one that you're gonna see on the website, first probably in the next month is search by map. So when you run a given search on our website you're gonna see a big map on the page that shows you pins where all the properties are located, and you'll be able to update your search results by manipulating the map, zooming in, zooming out, moving the map around, and we feel like that's gonna be a nice feature for folks who have a very specific area in mind, and something else we're looking at doing is we have maybe the most comp data in this space of anybody. We have listing data going back to 2007 with pricing data that we feel can be very useful to both buyers and sellers. Seller who's trying to figure out what is my park worth and what, how should I price this thing and buyers to figure out is this a good deal?
0:10:13.5
Dylan Shrader: So we're planning to package up that data in a way that it's accessible and useful and expose it on the website. So let's say you run a search for RV Parks for sale in or near Austin Texas, and we're gonna show you on the page where you, we've got search results. We're gonna give you some historical pricing data, average price over time, average price per space over time, things like that like I said, we think will be very helpful for both buyers and sellers.
0:10:51.3
Frank Rolfe: Well, Dylan, it all sounds great. So the bottom line is we wanted to get you on here just to educate people who might not be aware of RV Park Store and the listings on there. And then additionally, for people who are aware of RV Park Store, to give them a better idea of the website and what features are on there, and what the future is. So again, we appreciate you being here. We appreciate RV Park Store and all it does to allow people to find the RV Park of their dreams. So keep those wheels spinning there on the website. And again, this is
Frank Rolfe wanting to introduce for those who are unfamiliar with the RV Park Store, the fact that it's out there for those who were maybe give you a little better idea of how it all functions. So again, Dylan, we appreciate you being here and we will talk to everyone again real soon.
0:11:43.9
Dylan Shrader: Thank you, Frank.
0:11:45.4
Frank Rolfe: Thanks, Dylan.