How to Increase NOI at an Underperforming RV Park

August 19, 2026 · RV park investing, explained

CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

This is for operators and investors who just closed on an RV park that is underperforming and need a plan for the first 12 to 18 months. Most of the gains come from five or six specific levers, not a single silver bullet. Expect the work to take a full season to show up in the trailing financials, since RV parks run on seasonal booking cycles and you need at least one full peak season under the new operating model before you can trust the numbers.

What you need

• Trailing 12 to 24 months of financials broken out by revenue category (site rent, transient, long term, utilities, store, laundry, other) and by expense line
• A rent roll with lot number, site type, current rate, lease start date, and length of stay
• Occupancy and ADR (average daily rate) by month for at least one full year, ideally two
• Utility bills for the property as a whole, plus any existing submeters or RUBS (ratio utility billing system) setup
• A competitive set of 5 to 8 nearby parks with their nightly, weekly, monthly, and long term rates
• Property management software or at minimum a clean spreadsheet that can track reservations, rate changes, and site status
• A staffing schedule showing hours worked by role and by season

Step by step

1. Audit the rate structure before you touch anything else. Underperforming parks almost always have rates that were set years ago and never adjusted, or rates that are flat across every site regardless of location, view, or hookup type. Pull your competitive set and compare nightly, weekly, and monthly rates side by side. It is common to find a park sitting 15 to 30 percent below market on transient rates alone. Raise rates in phases, not all at once, and grandfather long term tenants for a defined period so you do not trigger a mass exodus. A realistic first year target is a 5 to 10 percent blended rate increase across the park, more on transient sites, less on long term.
2. Fix utility billing. Many older parks bill a flat utility fee or bake utilities into rent, which means the park absorbs rising electric and water costs with no recapture. Installing submeters (roughly $150 to $400 per site installed, depending on site count and existing infrastructure) or implementing a RUBS allocation based on square footage or occupancy can recover 60 to 100 percent of actual utility costs that were previously unbilled. On a 100 site park this can add tens of thousands of dollars a year to NOI with no change in rent at all. This is one of the highest ROI moves available and it is often ignored because it requires some upfront capital and administrative setup.
3. Right size labor. Labor is usually the largest controllable expense after debt service, often 25 to 35 percent of revenue at a poorly run park versus 15 to 22 percent at a well run one. Look for overlapping shifts, seasonal staff kept on payroll during shoulder season, and manager compensation that was never adjusted to reflect actual occupancy. A staffing audit that matches labor hours to actual occupancy patterns, rather than a flat year round schedule, is often good for a few percentage points of margin without cutting service quality.
4. Improve the site mix and fill dead inventory. Walk the entire property and count sites that are unusable, unlisted, or mis-marketed. It is common to find 5 to 15 percent of sites sitting off the books because of deferred maintenance, bad electrical, or drainage issues nobody fixed. Bringing these back online, even a handful at a time, is often cheaper than building new pads and goes straight to occupancy. At the same time, look at whether the site mix matches demand. Parks with too many small pull through sites and not enough big rig or long term sites often leave money on the table since long term tenants at a fair rate produce more stable, lower cost cash flow than chasing transient traffic.

Beyond these four, ancillary revenue deserves a real look. Firewood, propane refills, laundry, a small camp store, golf cart rental, and pet fees are all low effort additions that individually do not move the needle much but collectively can add 3 to 8 percent to top line revenue at a park that currently offers none of them. Online travel agency listings and a functioning direct booking website also matter more than most new owners expect, since a park with no online presence beyond word of mouth is leaving reservations on the table every week.

Where this goes wrong

The most common mistake is raising rates too fast on existing long term tenants. Long term guests at RV parks are often retirees or workers on fixed budgets, and a 30 percent rent increase with 30 days notice will empty out a section of the park faster than you can refill it with transient traffic. Phase increases over 12 to 24 months and communicate early.

The second common failure is spending capital on amenities (pools, dog parks, upgraded bathhouses) before fixing the basics. A new clubhouse does not matter if half the electrical pedestals are unreliable or the wifi does not work. Guests and long term tenants complain about infrastructure reliability far more than they complain about a lack of amenities, and unresolved complaints show up as bad reviews, which suppress future occupancy for years.

Third, new owners frequently underestimate how long it takes for rate and marketing changes to show up in trailing financials. If your park runs on seasonal occupancy, a rate change made in March will not fully reflect in your numbers until you have been through a complete peak season, sometimes two. Investors who expect a six month turnaround are often disappointed even when the underlying changes are working.

Fourth, cutting maintenance spend to boost short term NOI is a trap. Deferred maintenance compounds. A septic or electrical issue ignored for a year to save a few thousand dollars in the current period often costs five to ten times as much once it fails outright, and it can take a section of the park offline during peak season.

When to stop and call someone

Bring in a licensed electrician or engineer before doing any submetering or electrical upgrade work, since RV pedestals carry real amperage and mistakes here are a fire and liability risk, not just a cost overrun. If your septic or wastewater system is aging or was never designed for current site counts, get a wastewater engineer to assess capacity before you add sites or increase length of stay, since a failed system can shut down the entire park and trigger state fines.

If your due diligence turns up zoning questions, non-conforming site counts, or unclear utility easements, that is a job for a real estate attorney and a local land use consultant, not something to guess at. And if you are unsure how to model the NOI impact of these changes against your actual debt structure and return targets, that is worth a conversation with an experienced operator or advisor before you commit capital. Invest With Zac works with investors on exactly this kind of underwriting and turnaround planning if you want a second set of eyes before you move.