As with any business venture, the buyer(s) need to take a real hard look at why they are considering the purchase. Is it for income, short term investment, long term investment or just for something to do during the retirement years. Over the years we have been involved in most of the above reasons.
We lived in rural Alaska for just over 25 years and during that time were involved in real estate investments, primarily for long term gains. To me, any of the rental business in Alaska need to be looked at in that light. Just after the finish of building the Alaska Oil Pipeline, in the mid 1970s, the urban areas had over built, both in commercial and residential building. The main finance place at that time was ASHA (Alaska State Housing Authority) and when the boom ended and the "bust" began, ASHA ended up owning several thousand properties in the state, mostly in the Anchorage bowl area.
A good friend and I felt there could be some long term gains to be made with some of these properties. So we contacted ASHA and inquired. They were delighted to deal with us as both my business partner and I were gainfully employed and had good credit. We ended up buying about six 4 plex apartment houses across the highway from Cal Worthington Ford in Anchorage, then we hired a professional management company to take total care of the rentals, turn key from renting them out, to maintaining them, etc. Was costly but worked best for us. We understood at the time, these were not going to be "income" producing investments but long term. We had to come up with very little down payment to buy, then the rent collected, most months, paid all the expenses, payment, taxes, insurance, maintenance, etc. some months there was a surplus and some months it was a negative operation but broke even most years. At the end of 30 years ownership, we had depreciated the properties to zero and then sold them. A very nice saving account it turned out to be, one that the renters, bought for us over the years.
IMHO, Alaska is the worse place I have ever invested, for return on capital. Campground site rents are cheap compared to here in Florida for example. The Alaska season is short, the costs of labor are high and most CG sites rent for about half of here in Florida. Too many government campgrounds to compete with in Alaska, but boondocking spots all over once a camper gets out of town.
We have been in business in Alaska, Colorado, Oklahoma, Missouri and Florida. Colorado was the best place, then Florida, then Oklahoma and Missouri, to invest money for us. I have always used the rule of 152 in evaluating a potential rental property. Take the estimated total sale price, divide it by 152 and that gives me approximately the income that property has to generate to make a reasonable profit for me.
A couple of years back I was on one of our trips to Alaska and an owner of a campground, east of Fairbanks wanted to sell me his campground and gave me his asking price. When I divided that by 152 I quickly realized it didn't have the potential to be a profitable business as I could see it. Plus why would my wife and I want to give up RVing to run a labor intensive business, that has a short season and goes for 24 x 7s when it does operate.
I like to invest in things I know about and understand, learned an expensive lesson, messing in the Hong Kong stock market many years back. My grandfather always told me that 99% of being smart is knowing what you are dumb at. He was right and Hong Kong proved it to me. LOL
I have found that many/most of the campgrounds in Alaska and roadhouses along the Alaska Hwy in Canada are for sale. Some might be OK for investments but most have some reason the owner is wanting out, maybe to retire, government regulations, deferred maintenance catching up with them, escalating cost of operations, health reasons, etc.
