This will be Sam Wilson’s first solo episode. Listen in!
Sam Wilson grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana with a large family and lived there until he was 30.
His family owned a flooring company and at the age of 25, he bought out a part of it. But his family sold the company and headed south, and got involved in real estate and invested in almost every asset class imaginable.
[00:01] – [05:36] RV Resorts as a Fragmented Industry
- Why they are considered as a mom and pop single asset business
- The difference between RV resorts and RV parks
- Wanting people to spend all their money on site
[05:37] – [09:52] Room for Operational Improvement
- The cumbersome process of booking an RV resort
- Why it makes sense to expand the park and putting dynamic pricing
- Ways to add storage and to do utility build back programs on these facilities
Tweetable Quote
“We want to have what people need for an R.V. resort experience where they can take the whole family and they can stay there for three or four days and have a good time and not any, all the way, even down to restaurants.
We’ve got a resort we bought here recently as a restaurant. I mean, that’s fantastic. That’s exactly what you want.” – Sam Wilson
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Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com
Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
Sam Wilson [00:00]
Usually a fragmented industry means that it’s a single asset owned by a mom and pop owner. That usually is their only asset that they own, and they don’t, generally not saying that they’re dumb people or the people that aren’t educated cause they can be really smart people. But they don’t possess the sophistication to really take their business to the next level.
Intro [00:21]
Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we will teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.
Hey, thanks again for tuning in here to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast. I certainly appreciate it for those of you who listen to the show on a regular basis. Yeah, grateful for you. Thank you. Certainly appreciate it. This is the first time that I’ll be doing a solo episode, which means it’s just me.That’s all you get today. I’m sorry about that. When this goes live, we’ll be north of 700 episodes. And somebody told me this the other day. They said, Hey, Sam, you’ve never done a solo episode where it’s just you talking to us and telling us what you’re investing in and how you’re investing. And I just don’t know that much about you.I’d love to hear directly from you on a show. So I can do a couple things here today, and I think this will be. Kind of the format that we’re gonna go with today, which is, first off, I’m gonna tell you a little bit about my background, which I’ll keep pretty short. You can probably hear that story on a lot of other shows before we get into that. And then secondly, I’m gonna tell you what we’re investing in.So part one here, I’m gonna go and hopefully this’ll be short for you so you don’t have to endure too much of it. Part one is that I grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. I’ve got a very large family up there, Lived there till I was 30. My family was involved in the trades. We owned a flooring company and I bought out part of that when I was 25, and then sold that part of the business when I was 30 and I headed south. I hate the cold, actually. I like the cold. It just didn’t like Indiana. Midwest weather in the winter. It seems like it drags on for about eight months of the year with about 40 degrees in gray in the occasional snowstorm, which makes just kind of for a miserable winter experience. So we sold that company and headed south. I didn’t know what to do next. Got involved in real estate and many iterations later. I’ve invested in every asset class imaginable, at least I think almost every asset class imaginable and many iterations later of investing solely. RV resorts, which is what I wanna talk to you about today.
The opportunity that we’re seeing in RV resorts right now is pretty astounding. So let’s talk about why investing in RV Resorts is a good idea right now. Let me give you a couple quick highlights and see if it makes sense for you first, and for. RV resorts are a fragmented industry. Anytime you see in real estate or business or otherwise, whether it’s a fragmented industry, meaning that there’s no major one player or player yours, it’s ripe for consolidation. Usually a fragmented industry means that it’s a single asset owned by a mom and pop owner. That usually is their only asset that they own, and they don’t, generally not saying that they’re dumb people or the people that aren’t educated cause they can be really smart people. But they don’t possess the sophistication to really take their business to the next level. Hey, this is an income producing asset. They’re enjoying it. It’s fine. They’re working hard at it, but they don’t have that broader kind of picture of going, Gosh, we can take this bigger and make it so much better. So, RV resorts certainly fit that bill for a fragmented industry. I wanna differentiate for you real quick, the difference between RV parks and RV resorts. An RV park is something that you’re gonna find roadside, middle of the country. You know, one stop, you know you’re gonna stay there overnight, maybe you’re crossing the country. My wife and I have done plenty of traveling in our RV and certainly have stayed at our fair share of RV parks, which is I’m driving across Oklahoma, Kansas. Nebraska, wherever it is, you need to stop for the night, plug in, empty your tanks, whatever, and then get up the next morning and keep riding down the highway. That is not something we are interested in buying, and there’s a lot of reasons for that. But an RV resort on the other hand, has amenities to it. Think swimming pool, pickle ball courts, tennis courts, fishing. Game rooms, you know, events on the weekends. There’s golf cart rentals, there’s dog runs, there’s dog parks, there’s all sorts. The number of amenities that you can find at an RV resort is practically unlimited. So that said, we are buying RV resorts. We want something that is a destination. We want people to show up there and stay there for 2, 3, 4 days at a time and not feel like they need to leave for anything really at all. All the way down to having a really robust camp store, alcohol, sales on site, you name it. We want to have what people need for an RV resort experience where they can take the whole family and they can stay there for three or four days and have a good time and not any, all the way, even down to restaurants. We’ve got a resort we bought here recently as a restaurant. I mean, that’s fantastic. That’s exactly what you want. You want people to come and stay and spend all their money, kinda like a casino. You want ’em to come and stay and spend all their money right there on site and have no need to leave the grounds. That said, that’s exactly what we’re looking for is RV resorts.
Let’s go back to the comment that we started off early as to why a fragmented industry is so important, because it’s fragmented, because there’s a lack of sophistication, there’s loads of room for operations. For example, a resort we have under contract right now, if it has a website and I even need to look, I don’t think it does, but I know they don’t do online booking. They have enormous potential for expansion. They are by and large, almost a hundred percent occupied. One of the things that we’ll find is that these RV resorts have loads of room for operational improvement. This goes back to the fragmented industry, mom and pop owned. Think about things like a. Or online booking. You take those for granted in Airbnb or in the airlines or in the hotel industry? The RV resort industry, not so much. I acquired a park earlier this year that literally had a Hotmail email address. You had to email someone at whatever it was, 1, 2, 3, at hotmail dot. To request a site, you know how cumbersome that is, that booking process is, That means there’s somebody else on the back end checking their email going, Oh, hey, yeah, we have a site of, I mean, the back and forth on that’s maddening should even just, just give ’em a phone number. I mean, that’s even better. But one step better than a phone number of course is online booking. And then one step better than online booking is online booking on your website. That’s driven by dynamic pricing. Something that the rates fluctuate based on occupancy in demand. This same resort had the same price on April 4th as it did on July 4th. Now, July 4th, I wanna remind you, is the busiest weekend of the year. That is the chief money maker in most RV resort scenarios, and they had the same price April 4th as July 4th. Like why? Cuz they could remember. That way when somebody calls or someone gets checks, the Hotmail address and they say, Hey, what’s the price this day here? They’re like, Oh, well it’s, you know, it’s $49 a night. Well, that doesn’t make any sense. That doesn’t make any sense to me, and I’m sure it doesn’t make any sense to you as the listener going, Well, shouldn’t prices change based upon demand? Yes, they should, is the short answer. But this goes back to the fragmented industry being mom and pop owned and why there’s so much opportunity there. Ad dynamic pricing at online, booking at a website, capital expenditures, Here’s. Is that because mom and pop own this and we need to put a million dollars say into expanding a park, which is a lot of money. Don’t get me wrong. A million dollars is a lot of money. But if we can bring in the capital partners, if we can arrange the debt such that it comes in, and we can say, All right, we can expand the park, and we have the finances to do so, that’s great. We understand that. But if it’s your only asset that you. And you go, Gosh, man, a million dollars, and let’s say that we put a million dollars into this and it throws off another 130,000 bucks a year and gross revenues, Man, the payoff just isn’t there. For someone that’s looking to retire in five years, they just don’t see it. Well, for us, again, going back to expansion or capital expenditures, expansion, being part of capital expenditures is that we look at that and go, Okay, wait, you’re a hundred percent full. Like one of the resorts we acquired this year is a hundred percent full in the rv. Part of the RV park, part of the business. And we go, It only makes sense to expand the park. You’re completely full. You have a wait list, you’ve gotta expand the park. And secondly, you need to up the prices. And thirdly, you need to put in dynamic pricing. Cause you know that already covered the why on that. So that said, lots of room for operational improvement. There’s ways that we can add storage to some of these facilities. There’s ways to do utility build. Programs where your longer term tenants, yes, I shouldn’t say tenants, but longer term stays are getting billed back for utilities on a per site basis.
Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real EstatePodcast if you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen If you can do that for us that would be a fantastic help to the show it helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories so appreciate you listening thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.
