warrington said:
I wonder what it costs to build 40 RV park and 50 storage unit complex.
Assuming you are talking about on the land you already have, so no land cost.
The cost will vary widely depending on the location. And by that I mean the requirements and restrictions that the county or city places on the project. Some places will not allow rock roads, has to be concrete or asphalt. Some places have size minimums on the RV spaces that might differ from what you wanted to have. You likely will need an engineering firm to determine your water detention requirements. Hopefully your tract has municipal water and sewer availability, if not you have much more costs relative to water wells and a septic system.
In my area, someone wanted to put in an RV park and the city required public restroom/shower facility within 150 feet of any RV. Despite the RVs having restrooms and showers in them. I think they would have had to build 4 of them based on the size and layout of the park.
Looked at a 19 acre site along I-10 and it would have taken $80,000 to get water to it. Had to have a water line due to fire hydrant requirements.
I looked at building an RV park, around 50 spaces on nearly 9 acres. The cost of the roads and electrical were very high. This was around 12 years ago, and as I recall, the total project would have been around $800,000 (no land cost). I had two tax clients that did road building work so I got somewhat of a deal on the quotes for the roads. I would guess the cost would be closer to $1,500,000 now. This place was bare bones, no swimming pools, no rec room, no pavilions in the cost figures. Just RV spaces and a small building to house washers and dryers. Wound up buying an existing park at about what the roads would have cost to build.
RV parks are typically decent passive income generators but you have to ask yourself why people would utilize yours. Is it a destination thing, i.e., do people come to the area for recreation (beach or lake sort of thing) or for nearby work. Mine is the latter and if you go that route, you have to gauge how long the work will last. If they are building a large facility nearby, once they complete it, your pool of potential tenants falls drastically. We have had several projects where there were 2,000 to 3,500 construction jobs that lasted 2 years or so, but resulted in only 50 to 65 permanent jobs.
As you look at RV parks, storage facilities, and the like, be pretty cautious in how you estimate your occupancy. Things will look rather rosy if you assume 100% occupancy, they have a different look if you actually wind up at 60%. If there are RV parks in the area, drive through them to see what their occupancy is. I would suggest middle of the week, not weekends. They will likely have some overnight people on weekends and that will skew your numbers. I generally do not rent to overnight people.
You can do something similar with ministorage occupancy. Some of them are set up such that you can reserve spaces online. Some use software that will tell you how many 5x10s or 10x10s, etc. are available. You can calculate what their occupancy is if any around you have that setup.
Edit to add about your ministorage cost question. About 5 years ago, it would have cost $55k to $65k to build 50 to 60 units, depending on your size mix (how many 5x10s, 10x10s, 10x20s, etc. Plus the cost of the road to access the units. I only checked with one company, perhaps it could have been done for less by another company.
