buying campground

[jkhorner]

I am looking to buy a campground that has closed. Having a hard time finding them. Any suggestions?

[pitch]

Why is no one giving the OP any credit for having a brain.
I really don't think that there is a soul on the face of the earth that believes that he can walk into any defunct facility, be it RV park, bar, restaurant, or skating rink, light up the sign and start making money!
I can see many advantages to buying a closed park. Location is the one thing that cannot be changed,but as long as you have that go for it.
If you have a workable footprint things are good. It is much easier and cheaper to follow existing paths for utilities than have to re-engineer and start from scratch. Sites are already in place,much cheaper to regrade than to dig from nothing.
So for the OP: Good Luck I hope you find what you are looking for and have great success!

[Mr_Beebo]

Some folks are going to do what they want to do and just want others to validate their desire (see the countless "Can I tow this" threads).

Others are truly interested in learning about a venture. As a business owner, I will offer some more unsolicited advice: If posters are concerned that negativity around the topic of buying a campground will run off a potential entrepreneur before they even get their boots on, then it is best and cheaper for them to run now than later. Give the OP some credit that maybe they can read and decipher the responses and continue to make decisions for themselves.
Free advice is often seen as worthless before the fact, but can be priceless after the fact, when you are paying for all of your lessons.

[time2roll]

Probably best to speak with a commercial real estate broker represented by a national company.

[amandasgramma]

Keep an eye out for the Lemon Tree RV park in yuma. It was basically closed down this winter. Seems there's a sewer problem and the owner doesn't have the $$ to fix it. Good location and TREES!!!!!! I'd love to have stayed there!!!! Mind you....I was told the above......not guaranteeing that they'll be selling..

[Parrothead_Mike]

I'm not a campground owner nor am I dreaming of owning one, but I do use them quite often. In my very humble opinion be sure to look for one that has a great location relative to national parks, busy tourist areas, interstate exits where you might catch snowbirds going to/from their destinations and/or have other tourism connections.

Campgrounds found in out of the way places are very likely to fail or already have. If you find one in a somewhat out of the way area develop something that brings people in. A campground with live music, family related or specific like bluegrass, might create a buzz amongst like-minded campers. Or maybe you develop a variety of events that attract an already established following. Obviously music can be one, but something like wood carving, photography, church groups, young people events, on a route used by and for RV rally groups. Basically develop a plan to bring people to you if you're not already in a high demand area.

That's my 2 cents.

[All_I_could_aff]

There's a campground for sale in north jersey. 40 acres, 50 sites, $475,000
Phone number in ad is 973-875-8342
Not sure what town or county it's in

[Sprink-Fitter]

All they wanted was a place to find closed campgrounds. This thread reminds me of some I see on a Honda Goldwing board, when someone asks which camper to get to pull behind the Goldwing, 5 pages of people responding telling the op to never buy a camper because motels are better and campers are a waste of money when motels are everywhere.

[westernrvparkow]

valhalla360 wrote:

2012Coleman wrote:

valhalla360 wrote:

2012Coleman wrote:

westernrvparkowner wrote:
Supporting any business idea simply because it is someone's dream is irresponsible. Most of the responses here have been pretty spot on.

Really?? Ya think so???

Here is the original question.

jkhorner wrote:
I am looking to buy a campground that has closed. Having a hard time finding them. Any suggestions?

The OP wants to know where to look for CGs for sale. He didn't ask for your advice on running a business or a validation of his idea. He also didn't ask if buying a closed park is a good idea. None of these respondants knows the OP's financial situation or business experience - again, his question had nothing to do with that. Later in the thread, he states that he wants to start from scratch. Who are you to tell him if that makes sense or not?

He's not asking you to support his business idea - he's coming to a place to where a simple question shoul dbe able to be answered.

So no - most of the responses have not been spot on.

Seriously - get over yourselves.

When you open yourself up to ask for advice, people give advice. If you are asking the wrong question, it is perfectly acceptable and appropriate to clarify that.

To blindly urge them off the edge of a cliff may technically be answering thier question, it's certainly not helpful.

If he really knows what he's doing, it is highly unlikely he would be asking a question the way he did. If we were getting it wrong, a reasonable presumption is he would come back and correct any misconceptions.

So somehow you know what his question should be?

If you tell him where to find closed RV parks for sale, he buys one based of that advice and then fails miserably, your saying its your fault for pushing him twoard it?

So what/who else in the world are you responsible for?

What better place to research CG's for sale than a forum about RV's? Well, maybe he just picked the wrong one. I'm sure he has gone elsewhere where people aren't as presumptious.

Yes, I can read between the lines. He thinks he will get a screaming bargain by buying a failed campground. That is a poor assumption. Just because he didn't explicitly state that doesn't mean an intelligent person won't see that (and as I stated, if that wasn't the case, he would have came back and corrected the assumption)

When people ask for my advice and I choose to respond, yes, I have an obligation to advise them to the best of my ability.

He did choose a good place to research and it appears that the vast majority have given him good advice to rethink the idea. The only ones supporting it are seem to be in the everyone should get an award group. That's great in elementary school. Not so good if your life savings is on the line.

I am right there with you. When people are looking to go into the RV Park business, I think I can offer some information from my experience. I am pretty much a "rising tide lifts all boats" kind of person. If the whole industry gets better, that will bring more people into RVing and that is good for me. I Guess I could take the "sink enough boats, and yours will become the only option" approach and give the OP exactly what they want and nothing more. That would almost assuredly eliminate one more potential competitor from the market.
I really get a kick out of the "they have a dream, so support it no matter how flawed that dream is" crowd. I wonder if they take that tact in their own lives. Do they tell their 6'5" 275LB Junior in high school it is perfectly OK to drop out of school and pursue their dream of becoming a horse racing jockey? Even the worst schemes will have someone the dream promoters can point to and say "see it works". The dream promoters are quick to point to Bill Gates dropping out of college to found Microsoft and Ross Perot quitting his job at IBM and investing his last $10,000 to start EDS (pretty much a false stories, by the way) but for every outlier story like those, there are thousands upon thousands of stories where people wish they had better information and advice and had approached their dreams a whole lot differently.

[winnietrey]

Many times I think it is a case of us old war horses, trying to be overly helpful. I don't think any posters are trying to be mean, just trying to give some advice. Someone asks a simple question gets all the long winded answers, from us old guys.

Probably frustrating for the OP, but if one pays attention, lots and lots of great advice from years of experience.

I know I do it, kids will ask a simple question, and I will go into some long winded response. Not because I am trying to be mean, but because of that question, I want them to know there is often a whole bunch of things that go along with that question, they may not have thought of, have you thought about this or that, just things we have learned from experience. Don't want them to make the same mistakes I did

Probably, why they don't ask me much (LOL) they don't want to hear all my long winded thougths.

[valhalla360]

2012Coleman wrote:

valhalla360 wrote:

2012Coleman wrote:

westernrvparkowner wrote:
Supporting any business idea simply because it is someone's dream is irresponsible. Most of the responses here have been pretty spot on.

Really?? Ya think so???

Here is the original question.

jkhorner wrote:
I am looking to buy a campground that has closed. Having a hard time finding them. Any suggestions?

The OP wants to know where to look for CGs for sale. He didn't ask for your advice on running a business or a validation of his idea. He also didn't ask if buying a closed park is a good idea. None of these respondants knows the OP's financial situation or business experience - again, his question had nothing to do with that. Later in the thread, he states that he wants to start from scratch. Who are you to tell him if that makes sense or not?

He's not asking you to support his business idea - he's coming to a place to where a simple question shoul dbe able to be answered.

So no - most of the responses have not been spot on.

Seriously - get over yourselves.

When you open yourself up to ask for advice, people give advice. If you are asking the wrong question, it is perfectly acceptable and appropriate to clarify that.

To blindly urge them off the edge of a cliff may technically be answering thier question, it's certainly not helpful.

If he really knows what he's doing, it is highly unlikely he would be asking a question the way he did. If we were getting it wrong, a reasonable presumption is he would come back and correct any misconceptions.

So somehow you know what his question should be?

If you tell him where to find closed RV parks for sale, he buys one based of that advice and then fails miserably, your saying its your fault for pushing him twoard it?

So what/who else in the world are you responsible for?

What better place to research CG's for sale than a forum about RV's? Well, maybe he just picked the wrong one. I'm sure he has gone elsewhere where people aren't as presumptious.

Yes, I can read between the lines. He thinks he will get a screaming bargain by buying a failed campground. That is a poor assumption. Just because he didn't explicitly state that doesn't mean an intelligent person won't see that (and as I stated, if that wasn't the case, he would have came back and corrected the assumption)

When people ask for my advice and I choose to respond, yes, I have an obligation to advise them to the best of my ability.

He did choose a good place to research and it appears that the vast majority have given him good advice to rethink the idea. The only ones supporting it are seem to be in the everyone should get an award group. That's great in elementary school. Not so good if your life savings is on the line.

[westernrvparkow]

jkhorner wrote:
I only asked if anybody knew of any that were for sale.

search ""former" campground for sale" on Google. Be sure the word "former" is in quotations, that will force the search to include that word in the results. I found around 5 or six parks within a couple of minutes. Some are on LoopNet, which is a subscription service listing businesses for sale. It is a good resource. I still think you are barking up a very wrong tree, but it's your time and money, not mine.

[jkhorner]

I only asked if anybody knew of any that were for sale.

[amandasgramma]

westernrvparkowner wrote:

amandasgramma wrote:


My only suggestion to OPer.....if you find one, and have to regrade the sites, and can do it, PLEASE put them at an angle ......why are all the parks (or most) having people park their rigs at a 90 degree angle???? That's HARD!!!!!

If you angle the sites, you get less sites per row. You COULD partially overcome the loss of sites by creating more rows with less sites per row, but that would require relocating the roads, the utilities, removing full grown trees, redoing all the landscaping and probably needing to get new permits from the licensing authority. Older parks were built when there were many fewer giants roaming the earth. Angled sites were not an issue when most rigs were 20 foot Scotties, with no slides pulled by the family station wagon. Other than the fact an existing park would have buildings, advertising and a customer base, it is more expensive to completely re-configure an existing park than it is to build one from scratch.

I figured.....but a gal can wish, can't she?????

[Mich_F]

Perhaps the OP has just "moved along". He has two posts on this forum, both of them in this thread, which he started. Perhaps his second post was a parting shot? A mod did change whatever he had posted in his second post. :h
Or perhaps, unlike me, has better things to do with his time, than spend it on internet forums. :B